272 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



to the incipient Re-Education, with its three H's — Heart, Hand, 

 and Head, for which the three R's are then so much more easily and 

 soundly acquired, swiftly too, even by "explosion" as Montessori 

 rightly calls it— there is good hope of coming increase of individual 

 and social "efficiency", even to "genius". "Taylorian efficiency" — 

 which as we now know beyond dispute can not only double or 

 quadruple, but even sometimes septuple, the muscular abilities of 

 labour— can thus be rivalled, and even surpassed, upon the more 

 fully psychic and psych-organic levels. So if any reader doubt this, 

 and with sufficient scientific openness and energetic patience for the 

 needed experimental trials, let him join us in such endeavour. 



SUSPENDED ANIMATION. — This old-fashioned term "sus- 

 pended animation" is useful in its elasticity, for it is less precise 

 than hibernation, lethargy, latent life, coma, animal hypnosis, 

 cataleps}', and the like, and can be applied to a greater variety of 

 cases. The hedgehogs are hibernators; the slow-worms lie torpid in 

 the recesses of a mossy bank; the frogs huddle stiffly in a disused 

 drain-pipe ; the snails, with the mouth of the shell well sealed, hide 

 in a deep corner of an old wall ; the young queen humble-bee drowses 

 through the cold months in some safe retreat underground; and so 

 is it in winter for hundreds of other animals, not to speak of the 

 seeds of plants which are lying dormant in the earth. 



There is a long gamut between the hibernating bat and the 

 desiccated, but certainly not dead, bear-animalcule or Tardigrade, 

 but they have the common negative feature of suspended animation, 

 to a greater or less extent. Some day it will be possible to arrange 

 them in series; but that is not possible at present. What is certain 

 is that we have to deal with several distinct sets of phenomena; 

 thus the dormancy of a dried-up water-flea, which may survive for 

 several years, is very different physiologically from the cataleptic 

 inertness of a walking-stick insect ; and both are very different from 

 the sound sleep of a dog or a child, during which most of the bodily 

 functions are continued vigorously. The winter-sleep of a bat is not 

 like the dog's sleep, nor like the queen wasp's hibernal coma. 



To the chemist, as we have seen, living implies the frequent 

 upbuilding and downbreaking of carbon-compounds in a colloid 

 state, and most characteristic of all is the metabolism of the pro- 

 teins that form an essential part of the physical basis of life in all 

 animals. This changefulness of proteins cannot continue except 

 between somewhat narrow limits of temperature. It requires the 

 presence of a large percentage of water along with the protoplasm, 

 l^ut an enormous reduction of the percentage of water, or of mobile 

 water, is not necessarily fatal; for while the metabolism comes to a 

 standstill, it can be resumed after hours or days or years when suit- 

 able conditions return. Everyone is familiar with the dryness of 



