verified by experiment We are at liberty to assert either that the protoplasm increases by functional activity or that it is destroyed. Neither the arguments nor the objections pro or con have any decisive value. The facts alleged on either side are capable of too many interpretations.[1]
The only favourable argument (not demonstrative) is furnished by energetics. It is this. The re-building of the protoplasm is not like the organisation of reserve-stuff, a slightly complicated or even simplified phenomenon, as happens in the case of the reserve of muscular glycogen. The glycogen, in fact, is built up at the expense of foods chemically more complex. It is, on the contrary, a clearly synthetic phenomenon, certainly of chemical complexity, since it ends in building up the active protoplasm which is, in some measure, of the highest scale of complexity. Its formation at the expense of the simplest alimentary materials requires, therefore, an appreciable quantity of energy.
The assimilation which organizes the active protoplasm therefore requires energy for its realization. Now, at the moment of functional activity, and by a necessary consequence thereof, the chemical destruc-*
- ↑ The reason is to be found in the large number of indeterminates in the problem we have to solve. It will be sufficient to enumerate them: the two substances which exist in the anatomical element, protoplasm and reserve-stuff, to which are attributed contrary roles; the two conditions attributable to the protoplasm, of manifested or latent activity; the faculty possessed by both of being prolonged for an indeterminate period, and of encroaching each on its protagonist when its existence is at stake. Here are more elements than are necessary to explain the positive or negative results of all the experiments in the world.
