contraction, secretion, heat, etc., just as coal is expended to set the steam engine going. The proof as far as the muscle is concerned does not stand alone. There are other examples. In particular, micrographic physiologists who have studied nervous phenomena say that the anatomical elements of the brain last indefinitely, and that they continue as they are, without renewal from birth to death. The permanence of the consciousness, be it said in passing, is connected by them with the permanence of the cerebral element (Marinesco).
Thus destruction is very restricted. There is only a very slight disassimilation of the living matter, properly so-called, in the course of the vital functional activity. We may even go farther than this experimental fact. This is what Le Dantec has done when he claims that there is even an assimilation, an increase of the protoplasm. Strictly speaking, this is possible, but there is no certain proof of it; and in any case we cannot agree with him when he affirms that the increase is the direct result of the functional activity and blends with it in one single, unique operation. We must, on the contrary, agree with Claude Bernard that it is only a consequence of it, that it is produced in consequence of the existence of a bond of correlation between organic destruction and assimilating synthesis.
Why is there this bond? That is easily understood if we reflect that the assimilating synthesis, an operation of endothermic, chemical complexity, naturally requires an exothermic counterpart, the organic destruction which will set free this necessary energy.
Formative Assimilation of Reserve-stuff. Formative Assimilation of Protoplasm.—It follows that
