Sketch of an Orc/atiismal Thcorij of Consciousness 847 



of decompositions whereby carbonic acid and other matters 

 are discliarged first Into the siil)stance of the nuiscle and 

 subsequently into the bk)od."''' And lie points out in other 

 connections that what is true of nuiscle in this reL^•l^d is es- 

 sentially true of all other tissue systems. In another still 

 more recent text book we read: "Nothing definite is kiiown, 

 however, as to the nature of the ]u*obable combinaticms 

 formed by oxygen with the different materials for l)uilding 

 up muscles and other tissues, or of the intermediate anabolic 

 and katabolic forms througli which it passes in combining 

 with carbon into carbonic acid." '^^ And this autlior then 

 expresses what arc, apparently, his own views, by quoting 

 from Foster as follows: "The whole mvsterv of life lies liid- 

 den in the story of that progress [that of construction and 

 destruction in the tissues] and for the present we nnist Ik? 

 content with simply knowing the beginning and the end." 



The kernel of my suggestion so far as metabolism is con- 

 cerned, is that the anabolic, or the assimilative, the trulv 

 synthetic aspect of the com})lete operation, is the contimial 

 renewal, or keeping up of the oxygen constituent of the 

 organism which comes to it by heredity, that is which has 

 always been in the "line of descent." It is the maintenance 

 of what might be spoken of as the original oxygen constitu- 

 ent of the organism. There would always then be operating 

 in the organism oxygen of two sources, that from tlu" one 

 source designated, employing our well-established evohitional 

 terminology, phylogenic or hereditary oxygi'n : and the other 

 ontogenic or individual oxygen. In general the same kind 

 of reasoning would hold for the other chemical simples, car- 

 bon, nitrogen, and so on; but these are in (julte a difrirint 

 status from oxygen owing to thi- fact that they are not 

 normally taken by the animal organism in tlie pure or uncom- 

 bined state, but only in some other organic combination, 

 as food in the ordinary sense. 



Metabolically ex]iressed, then, we may say in short that 



