NATURE OF NUTRITION. 269 



for if this were so the introduction of preservative fluids into 

 dead tissues would be a nutritive operation.* 



A fact of preeminent importance for which physicists 

 have to find the interpretation and the cause according to 

 the terms of their science, is the fact of the advance of one 

 portion of a mass of living matter beyond other portions of 

 the same. The phenomenon has been described in page 207, 

 but its significance has not been admitted by those who 

 believe in the universal operation of physical causes only. 

 It cannot be explained and I doubt if the fact is suscepti- 

 ble of explanation according to terms known to science. It 

 has been asserted again and again and with the utmost con- 

 fidence, that living matter is as incapable of moving of itself 

 as is dead matter, but the assertion is inaccurate, for living 

 matter may be seen by any one to move in the manner I 

 have referred to. And it is scarcely incorrect to say that it 

 moves of itself because at this time no one can adequately 

 explain the cause of the movement. The movement is not 

 as the movements of any non-living matter known, and it is 

 childish on the part of authority to declare that it is of the 

 same order as non-living movement, for authority is obliged 



* A fluid may hold in solution certain substances which are sepa- 

 rated from it as it traverses the tissue, thus adding weight to it and 

 altering the properties of the tissue, as, for example, occurs when cal- 

 careous and other slightly soluble substances are deposited in the soft 

 matrix of bone, teeth, shell, and other textures. This is a process 

 which can be made to take place in lifeless matter, and the fact has 

 been adduced in support of the doctrine that the tissues of plants and 

 animals are formed by physical and chemical agencies only ; but this is 

 not nutrition. Those who advance such arguments confuse the process 

 of deposition of insoluble salts in a material previously formed, with the 

 actual formation of the material itself out of substances of a totally 

 different composition. 



