Implications of the Theories of Nerve Action 205 



have no evidence that the chemical elements operating them- 

 selves can actualize their own latent doscarecious powers. 



The reader will hardly fail to connect what we are say- 

 ing with the familiar phenomena of the assimilation by 

 organisms of nutrient substances. All our argument really 

 does to the usual conception of this phenomenon is to focus 

 attention upon the fundamental importance of the individual 

 organism as a factor, as a cause, of the chemical transfor- 

 mations wrought in the nutrient substances. The insuf- 

 ficiency of statement of the assimilative, or anabolic, or 

 synthetic aspect of the metabolic cycle in the organism, 

 lies in its failure to bring out clearly enough the indubitable 

 fact that the final results are innumerable activities and sub- 

 stances which pertain solely to the living, normal individual 

 which are strictly personal and private, as one may say. 



The current mode of expression according to which the 

 assimilative syntheses take place in the organism is quite 

 misleading in that it permits or even encourages a concep- 

 tion that the syntheses have a measure of detachment from, 

 and independence of, the life of the organism as a working 

 unit, which as a matter of fact they do not have. Again, the 

 usual statement that the* syntheses result in organic sub- 

 stances of more complex, higher make-up is inadequate in 

 that it diverts attention from the fact that these new sub- 

 stances belong to, are fundamentally part and parcel of the 

 organism. They are not "any old organic substances" but 

 are exactly those substances necessary to maintain the nor- 

 mal life of the particular individual organism. Hence de- 

 spite the indubitable fact that the final results are reached 

 by way of innumerable purely physical and chemical opera- 

 ations, the organism itself, acting as an integer no matter 

 how complex, is always to the fore as a controlling, domi- 

 nating factor. 



