n6 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



ponderance toward one side or the other. In a certain sense, too 

 he processes of income and expenditure must balance, but onlv to the 

 tusual extent — that expenditure must not altogether ou trunincome 

 else the cell's capital of living matter will be lost, — a fate which is 

 often not successfully avoided. The disruptive, or katabolic, or energy- 

 expending set of changes, may be obviously greater in one cell than 

 in another, in proportion to the constructive or anabolic processes. 

 Then, we may shortly say that the one cell is more katabolic than 

 the other, or vice versa on the opposite supposition. Just as our 

 expenditure and income should balance at the year's end, but may 

 vastly outstrip each other at particular times, so it is with the cell of 

 the body. Income, too, may continuously preponderate, and we 

 increase in wealth, or similarly, in weight, or in anabolism. Conversely, 

 expenditure may predominate, but business may be prosecuted at a 

 loss; and similarly, we may live on for a while with loss of weight, 

 or in katabolism. This losing game of life is what we call a katabolic 

 habit, tendency, or diathesis; the converse gaining one being, of course, 

 the anabolic habit, temperament, tendency, or diathesis. The words 

 "anabolic" and "katabolic" are, of course, new, unfamiliar, and 

 undeniably ugly. Habit and temperament have very vague associa- 

 tions, and tendency sounds metaphysical; diatheses, again, seems no 

 better than the medical equivalent of this. These things the reader 

 must naturally feel; yet the medical man is nowadays quite scientific 

 and definite in speaking of gouty or neurotic diathesis, of bilious 

 habit, strumous tendency, or the like. The metaphysical vagueness 

 is no longer chargeable to him; still less, we trust, to us. 



We are now in a position profitably to return to the Protozoa, to 

 the phase of cell-life, and to the sex -elements. After what we have 

 just said, it is evident that there are but three main physiological pos- 

 sibilities, — preponderant anabolism, or predominant katabolism, or 

 an approximate (that is, oscillating) equilibrium between these ten- 

 dencies. A growing surplus of income, a lavish expenditure of energy, 

 or a compromise in which the cell lives neither far below nor quite up 

 to its income. Great passivity, great activity, or a safe average 

 between these; conservative accumulation, spendthrift liberalism, and 

 a compromise between these. In many different ways, more or less 

 metaphorical, may we express the plain and indubitable facts 01 

 anabolism and katabolism within the living matter. The student may 

 think of the processes, with some degree of accuracy, under the meta- 

 phor of an eddy in a stream, or of a ceaseless fountain, which, while 

 remaining approximately constant, is the expression of continual 

 ascent and descent of drops. The protoplasm itself must often be in 

 as ceaseless change as the apex of the jet. 



