340 Assimilation 
which catch the eye and by which we are inclined to char- 
acterize life. These are conditional on processes of 
consumption, of chemical simplification, of organic de- 
struction through which energy is set free. And it is 
quite necessary that it should be so, since these functional 
manifestations expend ‘energy. These phenomena in 
which the vital activities are most apparent are the least 
specific. They have only the character of general 
phenomena.” 
“The phenomena which accompany functional repose 
correspond to the reconstruction of the reserve materials 
destroyed in the preceding period, to organic synthesis. 
This remains in the words of Claude Bernard, ‘internal, 
silent, hidden in the expression of its nature, reassembling 
silently the materials to be expended. We never see these 
phenomena of organization directly. Only the histolo- 
gist, the embryologist tracing the development of the 
element or of the living being notes the changes, the 
phases which discover to him this homely work, here a 
deposition of material, there the formation of a mem- 
brane or a nucleus, yonder a cleavage or a folding, or a 
renovation.’ This category of phenomena is the only 
one which has no direct analogues. It is peculiar to the 
living being and limited to it. This developmental 
synthesis is the true vital phenomenon. Life is a 
creation.” 257 
It is then this reconstructive synthesis of living matter 
which goes on during the so called functional rest which 
we must seek to explain through the properties which we 
have postulated above for nervous energy taken as the 
basis of the vital phenomenon. 
**"Dastre: La Vie et la Mort. Paris, Flammarion, 1902. P. 
103, 107, 208—209, 210—21T. 
