THE DEEPENING OF PHYSIOLOGY. 287 



cells. One step further in analysis brings us to 

 the characteristically modern study of the chemical 

 and physical changes which go on in the contents of 

 the cells, that is to say in " the physical basis of life," 

 as Huxley phrased it, or protoplasm. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LIVING ORGANISM AS A WHOLE. 



The Life of Living Creatures. — In the childhood 

 — a prolonged period — of Life-Lore, attention was in 

 great part directed to the study of the activity of the 

 living creature as an intact whole. It is or should 

 be so in the childhood of the individual. Life as it 

 is lived in nature, the behaviour of the animal, its 

 relations to other living things, the " habit " of the 

 plant, its friends and foes, — these form part of the 

 oldest physiology and they should still command our 

 attention to-day. 



The term physiology is too much restricted to a 

 study of the internal economy of the organism. Just 

 as anatomical analysis may be compared to picking 

 a watch to pieces — an operation which dimly suggests 

 the delights of dissection — so physiological analysis 

 may be compared to a study of the kinetic aspect of 

 the watch, and even when physiology becomes com- 

 parative it is still like comparing one kind of watch 

 with another. To save the results from inexcusable 

 partiality and incompleteness it is necessary to 

 sound the natural history note, the recognition of or- 

 ganisms in the plural, as members of a pair, a fam- 

 ily, a flock, an association, a fauna, as threads in a 

 web of life, as agents in a complex environment. 

 In short, it must be recognized that physiological 

 analysis has seriously to deal with the intact living 

 creature in its natural surroundings, with its 



