Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/209

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influence of the intrinsic conditions appears quite as clearly. As we have seen, this is so that the requisite fundamental materials may be spent by each element in suitable proportions,—water, chemical compounds, air, and heat,—that organs may be added to organs, and that apparatus may be set to work in complex structures. Why a digestive apparatus? To prepare and introduce into the internal medium liquid materials which are necessary to life. Why a respiratory apparatus? To impart the vital gas necessary to the cells, and to expel the gaseous excrement, the carbonic acid which they reject. Why a circulatory apparatus? To transport and renew this medium throughout. The apparatus, the functional wheels, the vessels, the digestive and respiratory mechanisms do not exist for themselves, like the random sketches of an artistic nature. They exist for the innumerable anatomical elements which people the economy. They are arranged to assist and more rigorously to regulate cellular life with respect to the extrinsic conditions which it demands. They are, in the living body, as in civilized society, the manufactories and the workshops which provide for the different members of society dress, warmth. and food. In a word, the law of the construction of organisms or of the bringing to perfection of an organism is the same as the law of cellular life. It is otherwise suggestive as the law of division of physiological labour formerly enunciated by Henry Milne-Edwards; and in every case it has a more concrete significance. Finally, it brings the organic functional activity into relation with the conditions of the ambient medium.

How Experiment acts on the Phenomena of Life.—*