Thus far we have learned four functions of the organic world — 

 nutrition, growth, motion and reproduction. We find by experi- 

 mentation that if we diminish the nutrition the growth diminishes 

 and the motion lessens. If nutrition ceases, growth and motion 

 both cease and the cell dies ; the two factors that were combined 

 to form the living cell dissolve, and the organism ceases to be. Let 

 us consider the relation these four attributes of organic life bear to 

 one another. Since living organisms ran move, grow and repro- 

 duce only by means or p.'itrition, it is evident that they depend 

 upon nutrition for their continued existence. Therefore nutrition 

 is essential to the other three functions, for without it the others 

 would cease to act and the organism would die. 



But nutrition and growth cannot be acquired unless the organism 

 exerts itself in selecting food, and subsequently in assimilating it. 

 Thus we learn that without exercise, or the function of motion, the 

 functions of nutrition and growth wi'I cjase. Exercise is, there- 

 fore, absolutely essential to nutrition and growth. Without the 

 judicious exercise of each function of an organism the other func- 

 tions will not be normal ; with a little exercise of these funjtions 

 it may simply continue to exist ; but when they cease to act, the 

 organism must die. 



In life, as in death, decompositions are continually going on 

 These decompositions are in kind not different, only during life the 

 products of decomposition are removed and after death they re- 

 main in the body and thus poison the individual cells — that is, so 

 alter them that their conditions no longer fulfil the requirements 

 of life. 



Scientific authorities everywhere are unanimous on this point : 

 Omnia vivuni ex vivo (all life comes from life), or, as some put it, 

 C.nne viviim ex ovum (all life comes from an egg), which is only 

 another way of expressing it, as some animals are viviparous and 

 others oviparous. 



The germ, in both animal and plant life, is itself simply a de- 

 tached portion of the substance of a pre-existing living body. 

 Life, therefore, can be produced from a living ancestor only. And 

 the individual as it develops from the ^^^ cell epitomizes the 

 history of the ancestral forms of its species. 



Scientifically it seems impossible man can come from such an 

 extremely minute and apparently insignificant speck as the germ 

 constituting all there is in his beginning. We sometimes wonder 

 at the smallness of the o.^^ of the little humming-bird ; but even 

 such a shell full of embryonic germs of human beings would 

 be enough to people a city. Think of it ! Man, the lord of 

 creation, yet in his beginning su^' l mere speck that it takes the 

 most cultured eye to discover it a' the best microscope to ex- 

 amine ! No wonder science stands jpalled and scientists sit by 

 as pigmies. We must remember, ti >, that infinitesimal as is the 

 human ^^g, it is not the germ ; this ii merely -he mass, a compara- 

 tively crude mass. The germ withi ■• as with other eggs, is very 



