8G BEALE'S PROTOPLASMIC THEORY. 



In these examples we see liow absorption is just as 

 much a part of the function of protoplasm as deposi- 

 tion, and in fact it is in reality a mode of growth 

 which is the distinguishing attribute of living matter. 

 But these examples hardly do justice to the theory as 

 a whole, for they apply either to disease or to the 

 lower forms of individuality in which all the essential 

 functions of life are concentrated in simple plastids. 

 To see how removal of tissue forms part of an orderly 

 purposive process just as much as deposition, we must 

 go back to the laws of development. In all living 

 matter the faculties of nutrition, function, and develop- 

 ment are inextricably interwoven, and however one 

 or other may be predominant at any period of life, 

 still the others are never altogether absent. Schwann 

 divided the faculties of the cell into plastic and meta-. 

 bolic; the latter meaning those processes whereby chemi- 

 cal transformations are produced, and therefore princi- 

 pally concerned in secretion, which is the chief part of 

 nil functions, and the former including the formative 

 and also germinal faculties. Thus the plastic, the me- 

 tabolic, and the germinal may comprise the faculties of 

 living matter. Beale looks upon the germinal as the 

 fundamental one, and as lasting more or less through 

 life and including the rest, he gives that name to the 

 living matter. He points out that the same mass of 

 protoplasm in the cells of secreting organs gives origin 

 to two very different products, viz., the cell wall and 

 the secretion, two things whose composition and pro- 

 perties are totally different, thus representing the 

 plastic and metabolic faculties. The ultimate power 

 of forming the tissues is only reached by a long series. 



