ON LIFE 437 



cells is secured by the evolution or super-addition of what 

 is called a systemic nervous system, and finally the division 

 of the dually innervated organism into tissues, organs, and 

 limbs is effected by the conjoint agency of the three 

 special plans indicated of vitalisation and energisation, viz. 

 the molecular, granular or corpuscular, the cellular, and 

 the neuro-systemic. 



Life, as thus viewed on its positive, or genetic, aspect, 

 begins with, or in, the process of digestion, wherein the 

 raw elements of the food are reduced to a molecular 

 condition, or consistence, energised and passed by gastro- 

 intestinal absorption and adeno-vascular manipulation and 

 circulation into the great sanguineous circulatory reposi- 

 tory, from which in turn the now vitalised, or potentially 

 dynamic, food elements are distributed to every structural 

 unit and tissue of the organised body, where they are 

 vitally integrated, or temporarily attached and made fully 

 subservient to the functional activities of life, and the 

 living requirements of the organism, or materio-dynamic 

 being. These bio-genetic changes constitute the materio- 

 dynamics of the evolutionary half of life, and insensibly, 

 but persistently, terminate in the involutionary half 

 where katabolic change sets in, and terminates by return- 

 ing to the inorganic world of matter, with the utmost 

 precision, every atom and molecule of the raw material 

 originally supplied for specific bio-genetic purposes, the 

 remaining vital dynamic entity in like manner and of 

 necessity being yielded up in its imperishable entirety 

 and exactitude. 



The two aspects of vitality presented here the evolu- 

 tionary and involutionary to the observer of the working 

 of the materio-dynamic phenomena of life are, compara- 

 tively speaking, of proportionately equal extent and area, 

 and between them constitute the vast field on which 

 matter becomes alive, lives, and dies, and on which that 

 phase of vital dynamic activity is manifested, which 

 becomes appreciable to conscious being and realisable 

 by limited human intelligence, which realisation is but 

 faintly communicable from intelligence to intelligence, 

 through channels patent, but still almost indecipherable 

 from the " points of view " accessible to even the highest 



