

FACTS 179 



assimilation in general, we have seen how colloids bathing 

 each other influence each other reciprocally. The circula- 

 tion brews without stop the interior medium and gives 

 it a certain homogeneousness in the individual as a whole. 

 We ought, therefore, to consider all the cells of the living 

 being those of the eye as well as those of the toe as 

 being in equilibrium with one and the same colloid. 



This already sets up a noteworthy unity through the 

 being's whole extent ; a modification of the colloid state 

 cannot affect one cell without modifying the interior medium 

 and having a consequent rebound on the sum total of the 

 other cells. For this reason, in the individual, there is no 

 local phenomenon. 



By the interior medium, therefore, there is established 

 a conduction of the local modifications toward the whole 

 organism. Of course, this conduction will be weak in the 

 case of a variation concerning at the start only a single cell, 

 because of the slight dimension of the cell with relation 

 to the whole body which in man, for example, is sixty 

 trillion times greater. In the same way an electric oscilla- 

 tion, unless it be, very intense, is quickly spent when trans- 

 mitted through the whole environment in wireless tele- 

 graphy. On the contrary, with a conducting wire, a weak 

 oscillation may be transmitted very far without losing 

 much of its intensity, because the quantity of substance 

 set in motion is proportional to the length of the wire 

 instead of being proportional to a power of that length, 

 as in the case of wireless telegraphy. 



This comparison with the telegraphy of Morse and of 

 Hertz is apposite in the present case precisely because, 

 in higher animals at least, along with conduction by the 

 interior medium which recalls Hertzian telegraphy there 

 is nerve conduction which recalls that of Morse. 



