Organisms and Their Origin 99 



a twofold process of building up and breaking 

 down, of winding up and running down, of con- 

 struction and disruption, and we know much in 

 regard to important processes of fermentation that 

 go on — much more, indeed, than we understand. 

 We are in the position of visitors to some great 

 manufactory who are permitted to see the raw 

 materials passing in, some stages in their trans- 

 formation, and the finished products p^issing out, 

 but who are not allowed entrance to the "secret 

 room" where the gist of the business is hidden. 

 When more is known in regard to the chemistry 

 of the living body, it may be possible to bring the 

 changes into better line with those which occur 

 in inorganic things and in the laboratory with or- 

 ganic things, but meanwhile we cannot redescribe 

 the activity of the living creature in terms of chemi- 

 cal formulae,^ unless we throw away the child with 



1 It is sometimes asserted by careless writers that the 

 progress of physiology in the last half-century has made it 

 possible to redescribe vital phenomena in terms of physics 

 and chemistry. 



"To me," says Bunge, a physiologist of undeniable 

 standing, " the history of physiology teaches the exact op- 

 posite. I think the more thoroughly and conscientiously 

 we endeavor to study biological problems, the more are 

 we convinced that even those processes which we have 

 already regarded as explicable by chemical and physical 

 laws, are in reality infinitely more complex, and at present 

 defy any attempt at a mechanical explanation." 



Dr. J. S. Haldane goes even further: " If we> look back 

 at the phenomena which are capable of being stated, or 



