72 BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



plasm and formed material repelled towards the circum- 

 ference. Every mass, however small, of living matter con- 

 tains some material in each of these three different states, 

 and some amount of this change is incessantly going 

 on as long as life lasts, although the rate of change 

 may vary excessively in the active, resting, and dor- 

 mant stages in which the protoplasm may exist. Thus 

 the act of change of bioplasm into the formed ma- 

 terial, is the act of death of the living matter, and Dr. 

 Beale constantly uses the graphic expression that the 

 protoplasm of this or that kind dies into this or that 

 tissue or secretion.* " Every form in nature, leaves, 

 flowers, trees, shells every tissue, hair, skin, bone, 

 nerve, muscle results from the death of bioplasm " 

 ("BiopVp. 10). 



But not only every material product, but every 

 action properly called vital depends on the same 

 agency. " Every action in every animal, from the first 

 instant of its existence to the last, marks the death of 

 bioplasm, and is a consequence of it. Every work 

 performed by man, every thought expressed by him, is 

 a consequence of bioplasm passing from the state of 

 life ceasing, in fact, to be bioplasm, and becoming 

 non-living matter with totally different properties" 

 (ibid.). " The germinal matter does not secrete the 

 formed material, but becomes resolved into it, and no 



* Road by the light of Scale's theory, Fletcher's chapter on death 

 assumes a peculiar significance. Fletcher represents death as a vital 

 process, the last of the living actions, whereby the elements are re- 

 arranged into the chemical state ; for those elements being hitherto in 

 a totally different state, the usual chemical affinities cannot take effect 

 on them till they are released from vital affinity by vital agency. He 

 says of the living tissues, " their vitality cannot desert them otherwisa 

 than by a vital process" (" Life and Equivalence of Force," p. 178). 



