Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/231

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now universally verified, show us that during this time of apparent repose the cells were loading up their granulations and getting ready the materials of secretion, as just now the muscle at rest was accumulating glycogen and the reserve-stuff which are to be expended and destroyed in contraction. Similarly, with regard to the functional activity of the other glands, of the brain, etc. Claude Bernard was, therefore, perfectly right, when he took as his model the chemists who distinguished between exothermic and endothermic reactions, and who classed the phenomena of life into two great divisions: those of functional activity, and those of functional repose.

1st. The phenomena of functional activity "are those which 'leap to the eyes,' and by which we are inclined to characterize life. They are conditioned by the effects of wear and tear, of chemical simplication, and of the organic destruction which liberates energy." And it must be so, because these functional manifestations expend energy. These phenomena, which are the most obvious, are also the least specific phenomena of vitality. They form part of the general phenomenality.

2nd. The phenomena which accompany functional repose correspond to the building up of the reserve-stuff destroyed in the preceding period, to the organizing synthesis. The latter remains "internal, silent, concealed in its phenomenal expression, noiselessly gathering together the materials which will be expended. We do not see these phenomena of organization directly. The histologist and the embryogenist alone, following the development of the element or of the living being, sees the changes and the phases which reveal this silent effort. Here