BOOK THREE. 



SCIENCE OF ORGANISMS— LIFE-LORE. 



CHAPTEE VIIL 



The Deepening of Physiology. 



historical outline. 



Aspects of the Organism. — The living body as a 

 subject of scientific enquiry may be approached from 

 many different sides. A dim personality it often 

 seems, intelligent or instinctive in its actions ; or it 

 may live its life on a lower plane where neither of 

 these terms is applicable. It is a unit in a family or 

 flock, in a fauna or flora, an item in the midst of an 

 environment, and must be studied in its inter-rela- 

 tions of dependence or antagonism, of co-operation 

 or competition, of successful adaptation or failure to 

 survive. It is a member of a race, starting in life 

 with a multiple inheritance from many ancestors ; its 

 individual becoming must be studied in the light of 

 its past history, its development in the light of its 

 evolution. It is an engine, transforming matter 

 and energy, and must be studied as a problem in 

 dynamics. It is a chemical laboratory, in which 

 reductions, oxidations, disruptions, constructions, 

 explosions, and fermentations go on in manifold 

 complexity. 



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