134 THE NATUKE AND ORIGIN OF LIFE 



of colloids, we are just as ill-fitted for the synthetic study 

 of its history as our colloid observer was just now to study 

 us on the human scale. 



But for the observer of colloid scale there would still be 

 phenomena so small that he could not describe them in 

 language of his own scale chemical phenomena which, for 

 the colloid observer, would be what colloids are for us human 

 observers. But in living substances, at least, chemical 

 movements can be attached to colloidal movements (just 

 as we have verified that colloidal movements are attached 

 to anatomical movements) by such strict relations of cause 

 and effect that chemical phenomenon and colloid pheno- 

 menon are the expression of but one and the same activity 

 in two different scales. 



Here, then, we have three distinct scales, in which the 

 activity of an animal or a man can be considered the ana- 

 tomical scale, the colloid scale, the chemical scale. In these 

 three scales we meet with different mechanisms, chemical, 

 colloidal, anatomical ; and we know that relations of cause 

 and effect exist among the activities of these mechanisms 

 of different scale. At least, this is evident for colloidal and 

 anatomical mechanisms ; it is less certain for the chemical 

 and the colloidal mechanisms. Perhaps certain movements 

 of the colloid scale, certain modifications of the colloidal 

 state of a protoplasm, may be produced without changing 

 the chemical state of at least some of its chemical constitu- 

 ents. The influence of colloidal variations on chemical 

 compounds is limited to those compounds which, along with 

 the conditions of life, exist in their relations to the colloid 

 state in conditions analogous to those of carbonate of lime 

 above 960 Centigrade in relation to temperature and pressure. 

 Facts which we shall have to study prove that this is the 

 case oftenest realized. 



