NUTRITION. 225 



functionally active grow, and those which do not act 

 become atrophied. We are only expressing the facts 

 when we say that the organic destructions that go on in 

 the living being (whether at the expense of its reserve- 

 stuff or at the expense of its medium, or whether it be 

 even slightly at the expense of the plastic substance 

 itself) are the antecedent, the inciting agent or the 

 normal condition of the chemical and organogenic 

 syntheses which create the new protoplasm. 



On the other hand, we are wrong if we hold with 

 Le Dantec that instead of two chemical operations 

 there is only one, that which creates the new proto- 

 plasm. The obvious destruction is neglected ; it is 

 deliberately passed over. He does not see that it is 

 necessary to liberate the energy employed in the 

 construction, by complication, of this highly complex 

 substance which is the new protoplasm. He really 

 seems to have made up his mind not to analyze the 

 phenomenon. If we decline to admit that to the first 

 act of functional destruction succeeds a second, 

 assimilation or organogenic synthesis, we are look- 

 ing at elementary beings, in which the succession 

 cannot be .grasped, as we look on brewers' yeast. 

 We not only mean that the morphogenic assimilation 

 results from the functional activity; we mean that it 

 results from it directly, immediately, that it is the 

 functional activity itself Experiment tells us nothing 

 of all this. It shows us the real facts, the facts of the 

 destruction of an organic immediate principle, the 

 sugar, and the fact that an assimilating synthesis is 

 the correlative of this destruction. Besides, if it is 

 impossible in examples of this kind to exhibit the 

 succession, it is perfectly easy in beings of a higher 

 order. It is, then, clearly seen that the preliminary 



