THE FOOD QUESTION 



words lines of chemical affinity for ingre- 

 dients in the poisons, and the phenomenon 

 itself, therefore, has received the name of 

 chemio-taxis, or chemical drawing. There- 

 fore on this principle every cell of the body 

 when it draws its food from the lymph 

 which comes to it from the blood, selects 

 what it wants by chemio-taxis, that is, by 

 a power or property which is not essen- 

 tially different in nature from other chem- 

 ical affinities. Therefore, our supposedly 

 living attribute of nutrition by feeding 

 turns out after all to be a thing of chem- 

 istry. 



Admitting all this to be true, yet 

 chemio-taxis no more explains life itself 

 than anything else does. It is life which 

 produces chemio-taxis, and not chemio- 

 taxis which produces life. Our former 

 comparison still holds that it is not smoke 

 which causes fire, but it is fire which causes 

 smoke. Life produces all kinds of chem- 

 129 



