BACTERIA. 123 



consumes so much in comparison to the amount of structure 

 built. They are emphatically the destroyers of organic forms; 

 physiologically constructed to and for this end. Yet, they 

 must digest their food ; if it be solid, or semi-solid, it must 

 be liquefied, in order to be absorbed. Then it must enter 

 into the cells by the process of osmosis, and under the influ- 

 ence of the life force be converted into protoplasm albu- 

 minoids into the tissue of the growing plant. 



After this come the waste products. How? The cell 

 dies? No. This will not explain the phenomenon. If it 

 were the death of the cells, we would find the chemical forms 

 of the cells in the waste products. This is not the case. 

 Death does not alter the chemical forms. Therefore, there is 

 another remoleculization for the formation of the waste pro- 

 ducts ; a vital process of shedding out the used material in 

 two general forms. The life force letting go of the matter it 

 has had in its grasp, and casting it out as no longer of use to 

 it. The formation of waste products is not, in any true sense, 

 a process of dying. 



Life resides in matter which it has formed into such molec- 

 ular groupings as will suit its purposes, but matter does not 

 live. Electricity may be resident for a time in the Leyden 

 jar, but such a jar is not electricity. It may be said to be 

 electrified, and matter may be said to be vivified. If life 

 discharges matter which it has had in its grasp, the act is a 

 vital one, and as all changes in matter under the influence of 

 the life force consist in remoleculization, so does this; hence, 

 waste products are always in different molecular forms from 

 the tissues from which they are cast off, though they consist 

 of the same elements. It is by a vital process, then, that the 

 waste products are separated from the living organism, and in 

 the bacteria the general laws of physiology remain unchanged. 

 Here, as elsewhere, we find the definite respiratory product, 



