338 Assimilation 
tion, which correspond to functional repose and to organic 
regeneration.” 
“Everything which goes on in the living being is in 
relation to one or other of these types; and life is char- 
acterized by the union and combination of these two 
orders of phenomena.” 
“Disorganization or dis-assimilation uses up living 
material while the organs perform their functions. As- 
similative synthesis regenerates the tissues. It reassem- 
bles the reserve materials which the functioning organism 
must use up. These two processes of destruction and 
renovation, although inverse, are absolutely connected 
and inseparable, in the sense at least that destruction 
is the necessary condition of renovation. The phenomena 
of functional destruction are themselves the precursors 
and instigators of the renewal of material by the forma- 
tive process which is accomplished silently in the interior 
of the tissues.” 2°¢ 
Dastre remarks finally that “Claude Bernard devel- 
oped from the analysis of substances excreted as the result 
of physiological work, his conviction that every mani- 
festation of functional phenomena is necessarily asso- 
ciated with some organic destruction. For excretions 
certainly bear witness of organic demolition.” 
“But the underlying reason,” continues Dastre, “of 
this interdependence between chemical destruction and 
function is made recognizable by energetics. A part of 
the organic material (reserve material, but also living 
protoplasm) becomes decomposed, chemically simplified, 
reduced to a lower degree of complexity, and abandons 
*°°Claude Bernard: Lecons sur les phénoménes de la vie com- 
muns aux animaux et aux végétaux. P. 125—127; 157; 347—348. 
