1254 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



environment and conquering it. On the other hand, how apt is a 



member of an Eastern race living in the desert to think more of the 



denominator, the environment having everything in its grip, against 



which it is hopeless to struggle — the environment which one must 



endure, to which one must submit. To peoples in the Arctic regions 



and in the desert fatalism is naturally the prevailing philosophy of 



OFe 

 life. The formula =rF- is in itself no definition of life because the 

 EFo 



word "organism" comes in, and a definition must not include the 



I 



ENV 





m 



:.-.>. EZ 



Fig. 200. 



Organism and Environment. I, The Environment (ENV) may act on the 

 Organism, producing a dint ormodilication (i). The organism may produce 

 a change in its environment (2). II, The organism has an upHft, and 

 pulls up its environment. Ill, The environment improves, and raises 

 the organism. IV, The functionings are depressed; organisms and environ- 

 ment follow. 



thing defined, but it is a useful and suggestive shorthand descrip- 

 tion of living. Organism acts on environment and environment 

 on organism. Take, for example, a colony of beavers: they cut 

 down the trees of a forest, they build a dam, they make a canal — 

 that is acting on the environment. The beaver village illustrates 

 OFe, and so does the earthworm, tunnelling in the ground, dis- 

 placing the earth, and indeed eating it. But when a frog lies in 

 winter in a hole in a bank or in a drainpipe, mouth shut, eyes 

 shut, nose shut, everything shut, heart beating feebly, breathing 

 movements imperceptible, that illustrates EFo, the environment 

 holding the organism in its grasp. In plant life there is always 

 more emphasis on the denominator, because the plant is so character- 

 istically^ recipient of the sun's energy, and does not move about. 



