96 PALTIEN. [Von. XIT- 
constantly changing conditions brought about by these inter- 
actions. To affirm that the resultants of such complex inter- 
actions can be in any sense preformed is grossly inaccurate 
and misleading. 
To use the term “preformation” to designate in any way 
the remote antecedents of a bit of living protoplasm is like 
asserting that the germs of a banner cloud are preformed in 
the south wind, or that the germs of a watch are preformed 
in the iron and coal used in making it. 
Embryological processes are not to be interpreted merely 
as necessary preliminaries to a higher condition. There is no 
beginning or end. Each phase and part of a living thing 
should be treated as it actually is, and be accorded its full 
value as a perfected, completed thing, — not as it is going to 
be, ignoring the present to catch some imaginary glimpses of 
the future. 
In the higher animals, death comes to the organism in most 
cases, it would seem, as a result of the increasingly complex 
interrelation of cells. Non-living compounds accumulate in 
the tissues with age and destroy their elasticity or permeability ; 
the calibre of conducting tubes is diminished and they fail to 
furnish the necessary supplies, or excessive demands lead to 
rupture, lack of codrdination between volume and surface ex- 
posure, excess of capillary friction accompanying increased 
size of organs, etc. Such slight defects may place insuperable 
barriers to further growth and specialization. The same may 
be true of the individual cells themselves. We need not 
assume that they cease their activities at the end of a certain 
period because a certain amount of inherited energy has been 
liberated, as in the uncoiling of a watch-spring, but because 
they cannot clean themselves or adjust the necessary repairs to 
the new conditions. Environment, within and without, winds 
up and liberates the springs, not the ancestors. As long as the 
environment does this, the vital mechanism will continue to go 
till stopped by the products of its own activity, and the mechani- 
cal impossibility of adjusting old parts to new requirements. 
The more complex the relation of parts and the more per- 
fect their mutual adaptation, the more sure and complete will 
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