Vital Phenomena aiid the Theory 325 



claim that this might be done if he knew how, we ask 

 him to reproduce the series backwards. Nothing short of 

 this last form of treatment will do for exact quantitative 

 science. As we found above, no formula which cannot 

 be illustrated by the series of changes stated in a reverse 

 order will fulfil the demands of the shorthand of physical 

 science. 



Every chemical process, indeed, whether having only one 

 stage of composition, or whether involving many, has its 

 dissolution series as well as its composition series. The 

 series which the life history of the organism represents is, 

 chemically considered, no doubt a composition series ; but 

 when the organism dies, the dissolution series is not at 

 all the reverse of the composition series — a back-tracing 

 of life history. If we say that it is, i.e., that the composi- 

 tion and dissolution series go on together, and that it is 

 always simply a balance in favour of the former — then 

 we are dealing with two cross-section changes, not with the 

 longitudinal development processes at all. We ask what 

 it is which constitutes the bond holding these two series 

 together, in what we call the growth or development of an 

 organism as an individual. Either, in short, the character 

 of longitudinal change is present in the composition series, 

 construed as a single set of chemical terms, in which case 

 the dissolution does not reverse it; or the series is a re- 

 verse composition series, in which case there is no longi- 

 tudinal or genetic character about it at all.^ 



What the formula for the longitudinal or strictly genetic 



1 This point becomes very much stronger when we cite the racial or evolu- 

 tion series, with the 'immortality' of protoplasm. Think of producing the 

 phenomena of sexual reproduction from mature son to infant father instead of 

 the reverse ! 



