446 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



an opinion and capable of maintaining a dynamic existence 

 in perpetuity. 



The matter of which the body of man is composed is 

 thus first innervated, or vitalised by, the commingled parental 

 energies^ which blend in the innervation of the primordial 

 cell, and the poly-cellular sympathetic nervine area, absolutely 

 coalesce in the systemically innervated organism, and finally 

 vacate its crumbling textures, to pursue a separate existence 

 and destiny, freed from material entanglement. 



The materio-dynamic basis of his being is thus inherited, 

 it may be, from the first created organic unit by, or in 

 virtue of, a long sustained and regularly improved estate, 

 and the continued devolution, from generation to genera- 

 tion, of transmitted organic increment, he only taking from 

 his environment the material and energy to maintain the 

 bond of union during his "lifetime." 



The material he inherits in the primordial cell is, or has 

 been, already vitalised, but the material on and by which 

 he lives he vitalises himself, in virtue of being endowed 

 and provided for by that inheritance that material being 

 gradually vivified by subjection to the processes of nutri- 

 tional preparation, metabolic utilisation, and incorporation, 

 by his component textures. Man, therefore, is composed 

 of both dead and living material, inasmuch as until the 

 elements of his food have been converted into living 

 protoplasm, and vitally incorporated with his tissues, they 

 cannot be said to be actually alive, nor can the devitalised 

 materials resulting from tissue waste be said actually to 

 live, hence the union of his life or vital force, with his 

 component material parts, can only be in that narrow inter- 

 vening area, marking the lines of demarcation between his 

 not yet alive, and his already dying and dead, structural 

 elements. 



The first step in the conversion of dead into living 

 matter, and the re-conversion of living matter into dead, is 

 necessarily a process of loosening, or liquefaction, so com- 

 plete as to allow of circulation within trophic and atrophic 

 channels respectively, leading up to, and away from, the 

 actually living structures, in which the materio-dynamic 

 conditions are actually those of life, and in which death 

 gives place to life, and life gives place to death, or the 



