392 PHYSIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 



mately a moving equilibrium and ultimately a complete 

 equilibrium. The changes we have contemplated are but the 

 concomitants of a progressing equilibration. In every aggre 

 gate which we call living, as well as in all other aggregates, 

 the instability of the homogeneous is but another name for 

 the absence of balance between the incident forces and the 

 forces which the aggregate opposes to them; and the passage 

 into heterogeneity is the passage towards a state of balance. 

 And to say that in every aggregate, organic or other, there 

 goes on a multiplication of effects, is but to say that one part 

 which has a fresh force impressed on it, must go on changing 

 and communicating secondary changes, until the whole of the 

 impressed force has been used up in generating equivalent 

 reactive forces. 



The principle that whatever new action an organism is 

 subject to, must either overthrow the moving equilibrium of 

 its functions and cause the sudden equilibration called death, 

 or else must progressively alter the organic rhythms until, 

 by the establishment of a new reaction balancing the new 

 action a new moving equilibrium is produced, applies as 

 much to each member of an organism as to the organism in 

 its totality. Any force falling on any part not adapted to 

 bear it, must either cause local destruction of tissue, or must, 

 without destroying the tissue, continue to change it until it 

 can change it no further ; that is until the modified reaction 

 of the part has become equal to the modified action. What 

 ever the nature of the force this must happen. If it is a 

 mechanical force, then the immediate effect is some distortion 

 of the part a distortion having for its limit that attitude 

 in which the resistance of the structures to further change of 

 position, balances the force tending to produce the further 

 change ; and the ultimate effect, supposing the force to be con 

 tinuous or recurrent, is such a permanent alteration of form, 

 or alteration of structure, or both, as establishes a permanent 

 balance. If the force is physico-chemical, or chemical, the 

 general result is still the same: the component molecules of 



