92 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



no mystical conception as Verworn regards it/ 1 

 In an organism all parts thus show ' final change 

 relations ' (finale Wechselbeziehungeri) which are lacking 

 in inorganic material. 2 



2. The result which is attained in all cases by this 

 co-operation is exclusively the maintenance and repro- 

 duction of the organism itself. This result is rendered 

 possible by the capacity of the organisms to utilize and 

 assimilate the inorganic material whenever it is required. 

 This capacity is shown, for instance, in the purposeful 

 selection of the material which normally is taken up, 

 in the exclusion of poisonous matter 3 and the ejection 



1 Verworn maintains it is true, casually in Allgemeine Physiologic, 

 Jena, 1901, the essential similarity of the vital processes and the chemico- 

 physical ones, but he thinks in the next place only of the ' bodily 

 phenomena of life ' (p. 7) ; the physical form a problem of their own. On 

 p. 106 he concedes ' that the living substance cannot be associated with the 

 chemical without being killed.' Then is the life departed ! The most 

 superficial conception, at least in some places, we have found in the 

 otherwise excellent work Traite d'Histologie (published by H. Prenant, 

 Bourn, and Maillard), I, 4. Prenant must have had here an opponent in 

 view, who has maintained all sorts of nonsense. On p. 18 he himself 

 describes the peculiarity of life as the struggle for the maintenance of a 

 type associated with constant protoplasmic change. 



2 C. v. Hartmann : Das Problem des Lebens, p. 206. In cell-like forms of 

 inorganic nature ' each part is as it is, and must be, according to effective 

 molecular local forces, but it is not a serviceable member of a higher whole. 

 Between the parts there occur certainly causal, physico-chemical changes, 

 but no final change relations by which each part serves all the others and 

 all of them together minister to the whole.' 



s G. v. Bunge : Lehrbuch der Phi/siologie d. Menschen, II, p. 5. ' We 

 know that the epithelial cells of the bowel never permit the entrance of a 

 \vhole series of poisons although these in the fluids of the stomach and 

 bowel are quite easily dissolved. [Thus the mechanico-chemical conditions 

 for absorption are determined ! Remark by author.] We know even, 

 that if we inject these poisons direct into the blood they become, on the 

 other hand, ejected through the walls of the bowel.' For other very 

 strong proofs of the utilization of the natural forces, see the same, p. 3. 



