CHAPTER VII 



RESPONSE IN THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING 



INCREASINGLY throughout the preceding chapters there 

 have incidentally appeared various parallelisms between 

 the response of inorganic matter and phenomena we are 

 accustomed to consider as characteristic of life. Indeed, 

 but for the sake of brevity, these resemblances might 

 have been multiplied. Still, to our physicist they were 

 at first but incidental to his main inquiries. But as they 

 multiplied they also grew more impressive, more and 

 more close in their correspondence, and always under in- 

 vestigation of the same experimental and precise character 

 which marked the whole of the preceding physical work. 

 Such precision was in fact unavoidable, since these in- 

 creasingly physiological studies were carried on by exactly 

 the same methods as he had so often verified, and which 

 had become familiar and well defined. It is important to 

 note this : because so complex are the phenomena of life, 

 and so long have they been regarded as mysterious, that 

 biological speculation and even experiment is open to 

 suspicion of unsoundness, and not least among physi- 

 ologists in regard to each other ; and hence, at their 

 wisest, they are critical of themselves. It was with 

 this caution and self-criticism that Bose began ; and 

 not simply with a good deal of that fear and trembling 

 which every respectable specialist feels when he ventures 

 even to look over his neighbour's wall, still more to pluck a 

 handful of the roses which are overhanging into his garden. 



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