ENERGY IN BIOLOGY. IOQ 



by the materials in the digestive tube, the blood, the 

 liver, or other organs. 



This building up of reserve stuff, the complement 

 and counterpart of functional destruction, is not chemi- 

 cal synthesis. It is, on the contrary, generally, and 

 on the whole, a simplification of the food that has 

 been introduced. This is true, at least as far as the 

 muscle is concerned. However, to this operation, 

 Claude Bernard has given the name of organizing 

 syntJiesis, but the phrase is not a happy one. But 

 in no case was the eminent physiologist deceived 

 as to the character of the operation. " The organ- 

 izing synthesis," says he, "remains internal, silent, 

 hidden in its phenomenal expression, gathering 

 together noiselessly the materials which will be 

 expended." 



These considerations enable us to understand the 

 existence of the two great categories into which the 

 eminent physiologist divides the phenomena of animal 

 life: the phenomena of the destruction of reservc- 

 stuff correspond ing to functional facts that is to say 

 expenditures of energy; and the plastic pJtenomena of 

 the building-up of resen-cs of organic regeneration, cor- 

 responding to functional repose i.e., to the supply of 

 food to the tissues. 



Distinction between Active Protoplasm and Resen-e- 

 stuff. If it is not exactly in these terms that Claude 

 Bernard formulated this fruitful idea, it is at any 

 rate in this way that it is to be interpreted. This 

 can be done by giving it a little more precision. 

 We apply more rigorously than that great physio- 

 logist the distinction drawn by himself between really 

 active and living protoplasm and the reserve-stuff 

 which it prepares. To the latter is restricted the 



