ITS SCOPE AND METHOD 67 



fabric of the machine, and is not built into it, repairing 

 wear and tear. But food entering the body seems to be 

 in large measure vivified before its energy is taken. It 

 is built up into the living fabric of the body. In that 

 sense the creation of living matter from dead a literal 

 though not the technical heterogenesis- is going on to- 

 day, and in each one of us. 



Seventy years ago the microscope made its greatest 

 discovery. The old Greek simile of our school classic 

 likened man's body to the body politic, the State, a 

 corporate whole composed of individual members. Bio- 

 logy gives this a literal truth. The microscope reveals 

 that plants and animals are literally commonwealths of 

 individually living units, each unit a mere speck in size. 

 Collectively in each one of us they outnumber the 

 whole earth's human population. Thus the corporeal 

 house of life is built of living stones. In that house each 

 stone is a self-centred microcosm, individually born, 

 breathing for itself, feeding itself, consuming its own 

 substance in its living, renewing its substance to meet that 

 consumption, harmonizing with its own inner life some 

 special function for the benefit of the whole, and destined 

 ultimately for an individual death. Day-long, night- 

 long, in this commonwealth that constitutes each one of 

 us, there goes forward as in the body politic the sub- 

 servience of many individual purposes to one, the sacri- 

 fice of individual lives for the advantage of the many, 

 and the birth of new units which replace the dead. And 

 in all this we ourselves do but resemble each plant 

 and animal we see. And each of these living common- 

 wealths began its individual existence as a single unit, 

 whence arose the myriads that compose its adult being. 

 Division of labour went on and with it differentiation of 

 structure. A plan informed the mass that otherwise 



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