26 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



bones and hair and nails of such an animal as a cat are 

 almost entirely lifeless, even though they are integral 

 and necessary portions of the organism as a whole. 

 They are constructed by living protoplasm which has 

 died in their making. Thus without going beyond the 

 boundaries of the individual body, these substances have 

 passed from the sphere of life, and are dead. The ap- 

 parent gap on the other side between the lifeless and 

 living world is equally imaginary, for our living sub- 

 stance is continually replenished and rebuilt from the 

 elements of our dead foods. So, as Huxley says, a 

 living organism is like a flame or a whirlpool, which is 

 an ever changing though seemingly constant individual- 

 ity. We look at a gas flame, and we see in the flame 

 itself those particles of gas which have come through 

 the pipe to be agitated violently in the higher temper- 

 ature of the flame as they are oxidized or burnt. These 

 particles immediately pass off as carbonic acid gas and 

 water vapor which are no longer parts of the flame. 

 A fountain is continually replenished by the water 

 which is not-fountain, but which becomes for the time 

 a part of the graceful jet, falling out and away as it 

 leaves the fountain itself. Just so a living organism 

 is an ever changing, ever renewed, and ever destroyed 

 mass of little particles the atoms of the inorganic 

 world which combine and come to life for a time, but 

 which return inevitably to the world of lifeless things. 

 This is one of the most fundamental facts of biology. 

 The independence of a living thing like a human being 

 or a crustacean is a product of the imagination. How 

 can we be independent of the environment when we 

 are interlocked in so many ways with inorganic nature ? 



