290 THE UNIVERSE 



ment are those needed in others either for their 

 construction or for their work." According to 

 him life consists partly in a continual process of 

 interchange and reconstruction, at times sufficiently 

 violent to tear muscles, mutilate nerves and cause 

 stoppage of blood a process that goes on "in the 

 interior of the organism without external excite- 

 ment." Herbert Spencer defines life as "the con- 

 tinuous adjustment of internal relations to exter- 

 nal relations," but Gaule's definition of life lays 

 stress on the vital interplay between the parts of 

 the organism, which makes it a machine trans- 

 forming external energy. He asserts that the living 

 organism is more than a machine, because it does 

 not create energy directly from combustible mater- 

 ials, but only after building up its own tissues. 



He says a machine does work, but it does not 

 create and repair itself like living organisms. He 

 would therefore modify the prevailing definition of 

 organic life, and make it not only a machine, but 

 more than a machine, and emphasize the fact that 

 life is as much an interaction between various parts 

 of the organism as between the organism and the 

 world of exterior matter. He says one organ of 

 the body may lose in bulk, in order that others 

 may increase. This he has studied experimentally 

 in the frog, and finds that at one time the organs 

 of sex grow at the expense of the muscles and liver, 

 and at another time the reverse is true, and he 

 insists that "life is a continuous process of recon- 

 struction within the vital organism." This is an 

 important addition to the definition of life and 

 tends to support the electric theory, for every func- 

 tion of the body is adapted to generate the electric 



