the two categories of phenomena we must try to correlate them. We must try to discover, for instance, what there is in common between the muscle in repose and the muscle in contraction, and to perceive in the muscular tonus a kind of bridge thrown between these two conditions. The functional activity would be uninterrupted, but it would have its degrees of activity. The muscular tonus would be the permanent condition of an activity which is capable only of being considerably raised or lowered. Similarly for the glandular functional activity; the periods of charge must be connected with the periods of discharge. In a word, following the constant path of the human mind in scientific knowledge, after having drawn the distinctions that are necessary to our understanding of things, we must obliterate them. After having dug our ditches we must fill them up again. After having analyzed we must synthesize. The distinction between the phenomena of functional activity and the phenomena of functional repose or purely vegetative and nutritive activity, though only valid in the case of a provisional and approximate truth, none the less throws light on the obscure regions of biology.
The succession of energy and repose, of sleep and awakening, is a universal law, or at least a very general law, connected with the laws of energetics. The heart, the lungs, the muscles, the glands, the brain obey in the most obvious manner this obligation of rhythmical activity. The reason is clear. It is because the functional activity involves what is generally a sudden expenditure of energy, and this has to be replaced by what is generally a slow process of reparation. Functional activity is an
