342 PROFESSOR L10NJ:L S. BEALK, F. R.S.J ON 



Avlicn tlio supposed fra^-mont impinged on our g-lobe tlie 

 iiu})act would be so great that every mortal thing would be 

 hilled and its remains smashed to atoms. 



(i. The matter of our life-world is taken up over and over 

 again. I mean this — that of the constituents of living- 

 orgam'sms of to-day, many are at any rate substances 

 formi-d by living things — that had formed parts of living 

 organisms many times before ; and, 1 suppose, there is no 

 doubt that a great many of the substances that exist in our 

 living bodies now will, some years hence, be among the 

 components of other living beings. 



The quantity of matter in the world of course can never 

 change, l)ut the matter on the surface is always changing. 

 Things arc coming into the living world, living for a while 

 and dying, and other organisms take up the products of 

 their decay. In the course of time the matter of the dead 

 takes other forms Avhich may be of advantage to lower 

 forms of life which grow and multiply exceedingly. This 

 process, 1 imagine, has been ever going on since lifi? 

 appeared on the earth. In all living things the material' 

 clianges in the living matter seem to be governed by. 

 vitality, and life exists, in any given particle of Bioplasm or 

 living matter, as we know, for only a short time. In all the 

 food that we eat, or the food that is taken into an organism,. 

 there are certain coufiti'tuents rchic/t are verij xooii taken up hi/ 

 living matter and ichic/i, f/ieniselres, become part of the only liviiuj 

 stuf. tlie Bioplaani. Some Bioplasm is always dying in 

 different i)arts of every living organism, and the products 

 resulting from death may be, and generally are, especially 

 in early life, taken up by other living particles of Bioplasm; 

 a portion of these die, and the products resulting are 

 taken up by other living particles. This is the way in 

 wiiich the process of nutrition goes on — the particles of bread 

 or meat which we take into our stomachs, after being altered 

 by digestion, are at h'Ugth so changed that they become 

 fitted for the ''food" of, say, muscle and nerve Bioplasm 

 before they can become converted into these structures, or, 

 as the case may be, into other constituents of our tissues 

 or organs. It is at this time certainly reasonable to 

 conclude that these processes of Bioplasm living and dying, 

 go on over and over again in all living. Thus are the 

 particles of food, milk for instance, or other substance at last, 

 so to say "appropriated," by the Bioplasm of the tissues of om' 

 bodies, before any "tissue" or lastino- structure can result. 



