BIONOMICS . 229 



modifications of inorganic substances, supports the view 

 of Dr. H. Hille that minerals proper, i.e., in inorganic form, 

 cannot be utilised by the human organism as directly and 

 effectually as can true organic minerals ; a recognition at which 

 I have also long since arrived. 



Although, therefore, free organic crystalloids are rarely 

 to be met with in the animal organism, the latter nevertheless 

 owes a great deal to this agency, powerfully effective as it is 

 through its usual associations with colloidal solutions. 



Some organic crystalloids, like grape-sugar, fruit-sugar, 

 and milk-sugar, and certain salts, are indeed temporarily active 

 within the organism in the very crystalloid* form. Further, 

 be it noted and this is a matter to which we shall have to 

 recur in the next chapter although it be food in the colloidal 

 stage that is pre-eminently ingested by animals, what is of 

 ultimate and essential use in it has at one stage of digestion to 

 be transformed into the crystalloid phase by ferment-action 

 before it can pass through the membranes within which it finds 

 its preliminary elaboration. Pepsin and trypsin are thus 

 required to reduce (" ab-bauen ") many albumens and to 

 transmute them into simpler chemical " individuals " of 

 crystalloid form; for instance, into amino-acids. In the last 

 analysis, therefore, the importance of the crystalloid phase 

 again becomes emphatic. The colloid aggregate, however, in 

 breaking up, yields to the ingesting animal, apart from the 

 important symbiogenetic charge of its crystalloid element, 

 many residual energies, for good or evil, in accordance with 

 the origin and biological adequacy of the colloid used. 



We have already seen that amongst amino-acids it is the 

 aromatic ones that are wanted, because of their vitamine 

 association ; and when we now find that they are crystalloid 

 and also bear in mind the important relation between 

 crystallinity and the evolution of taste and of smell, we are once 

 more driven to the indispensable conclusion that those " whole" 

 foods alone which embody all the required advantages com- 

 bined, viz., the "love-foods," constitute the most ideal, the 



