176 THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LIFE 



has disappeared probably even there has been colloid trans- 

 formation. But at least one colloid function has been pre- 

 served, the morphogenic function ; I would almost say 

 morphogenic diastase, since the function has been transported 

 from the living body into the corpse. 



Well ! the importance of this morphogenic function is 

 such that, if we inject into an animal the corpses of microbes, 

 we vaccinate the animal against the living microbes themselves. 



In other words, an animal digests, physically assimilates, 

 corpses of microbes of the species A and develops in itself 

 the organ productive of the diastase which digests these 

 microbe corpses ; and at the same time it becomes capable 

 of digesting henceforward A microbes, even the living ones. 

 In other words again, an A microbe which, in ordinary con- 

 ditions, would easily live in a given animal and triumph over 

 it in the struggle, cannot live when it meets with the diastase 

 able to destroy the morphogenic part of its colloid state. 



On the contrary, in most cases when we vaccinate an 

 animal against one of the transportable diastases of the A 

 microbe against one of its toxins, as we say the animal 

 is not, on that account, vaccinated against the living microbe 

 itself. This shows that the morphogenic function which is 

 inseparable from the protoplasm of the A microbe is more 

 indispensable to the life of the microbe than are the other 

 functions which are transportable into the colloids of the 

 environment. 



We have thus taken a further step in the real and effective 

 analysis of the vital activity of the A microbe by adding its 

 corpse, which possesses its morphogenic or formative diastase, 

 to those other diastases which transport into dead colloids 

 its other partial activities. 



Thus more and more the living being appears to us as a 

 superposition of dead things. 



