hanging stream of fluids.
Substance which was at one moment a part of a cell, passes out and a new
substance enters. What is it that prevents the local whirl in this
unstable stream from changing its form? How is it that a million muscle
cells remain alike, collectively ready to respond to a nerve impulse?"
According to one view, expressed by Professor Rand, "Organization is
something that we read into natural phenomena. It is in itself nothing."
The alternative view holds that there is a specific organizing agent
that brings about the harmonious operation of all the organs and parts
of the system--a superior dynamic force controlling and guiding all the
individual parts.

A most determined and thorough-going attempt to hunt down the secret of
vitality, and to determine how far its phenomena can be interpreted in
terms of mechanics and chemistry, is to be found in Professor H. W.
Conn's volume entitled "The Living Machine." Professor Conn justifies
his title by defining a machine as "a piece of apparatus so designed
that it can change one kind of energy into another for a definite
purpose." Of course the adjective "living" takes it out of the category
of all mere mechanical devices and makes it super-mechanical, just as
Haeckel's application of the word "living" to his inorganics ("living
inorganics"), takes them out of the category of the inorganic. In every
machine, properly so called, all the factors are known; but do we know
all the factors in a living body? Professor Conn applies his searching
analysis to most of the functions of the human body, to digestion, to
assimilation, to circulation, to respiration, to metabolism, and so on,
and he finds in every function something that does not fall within his
category--some force not mechanical nor chemical, which he names vital.

In following the processes of digestion, all goes well with his
chemistry and his mechanics till he comes to the absorption of
food-particles, or their passage through the walls of the intestines
into the blood. Here, the ordinary physical forces fail him, and living
matter comes to his aid. The inner wall of the intestine is not a
lifeless membrane, and osmosis will not solve the mystery. There is
something there that seizes hold of the droplets of oil by means of
little extruded processes, and then passes them through its own body to
excrete them on an inner surface into the blood-vessels. "This fat
absorption thus appears to be a vital proce