18 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



plete induction. I am little concerned with the techni- 

 cal logic of this or any other argument, since school 

 logic is but the skeleton of living reasoning. Live 

 reasoning is the art of persuasion, and usually consists in 

 the choice of examples which reinforce each other so that 

 a contradictory conclusion seems improbable. The view 

 taken as to the functions in development of catalysts, 

 or tools, organic or inorganic, can obviously be supported 

 by the reverse phenomena of involution, disease, and death. 

 If growth depends on the embryonic possession, and later 

 differentiation or acquirement of catalysts, old age and 

 decay as obviously depend on an increasing failure to manu- 

 facture, acquire, or use them. According to Child, if I 

 interpret him rightly, degeneration commences at birth, or 

 even earlier. As shown by the decreasing heart-rate, 

 there is a gradual slackening of metabolism possibly due to 

 the strain on the organism of manufacturing its own com- 

 plex catalysts, and dealing with its own food. Little by 

 little the strain increases, until the organism shows signs 

 of failure, and there is a loss of catalytic balance with 

 concomitant loss of activity. We have to account for the 

 diversion of available energy, and to say no more than that 

 it fails naturally is no explanation. Opotherapy, or the 

 exhibition of activating or inhibiting drugs, may prolong 

 the drama ; but the end comes when the body can no longer 

 be spurred on by what it makes or ingests. 



There is also in the phenomena of a serious or fatal 

 disease an inverted parallelism to those of growth and life. 

 Infection, or " shock," whatever that may be, affects the 

 functions of every tissue and gland, and many classic cases 

 of " fever " may be mapped out by symptoms caused, not 

 by the infection, but by prematurely vitiated secretions, 

 and the consequent loss of catalytic power to deal with the 



