d serve as one of the best examples
of the frequent confusion or intermixing of dimensions--a confusion due to
unmathematical, logically incorrect ways of thinking. If crystals "live,"
then _volumes are surfaces_, and 125 cubic units=25 square
units--absurdities belonging to the "childhood of humanity."

"Crystals can grow in a proper solution, and can regenerate their
form in such a solution when broken or injured; it is even
possible to prevent or retard the formation of crystals in a
supersaturated solution by preventing 'germs' in the air from
getting into the solution, an observation which was later utilized
by Schroeder and Pasteur in their experiments on spontaneous
generation. However, the analogies between a living organism and a
crystal are merely superficial and it is by pointing out the
fundamental differences between the behavior of crystals and that
of living organisms that we can best understand the specific
difference between non-living and living matter. It is true that a
crystal can grow, but it will do so only in a supersaturated
solution of its own substance. Just the reverse is true for living
organisms. In order to make bacteria or the cells of our body
grow, solutions of the split products of the substances composing
them and not the substances themselves must be available to the
cells; second, these solutions must not be supersaturated, on the
contrary, they must be dilute; and third, growth leads in living
organisms to cell division as soon as the mass of the cell reaches
a certain limit. This process of cell division can not be claimed
even metaphorically to exist in a crystal. A correct appreciation
of these facts will give us an insight into the specific
difference between non-living and living matter. The formation of
living matter consists in the synthesis of the proteins, nucleins,
fats, and carbohydrates of the cells, from split products....

"The essential difference between living and non-living matter
consists then in this: the living cell synthesizes its own
complicated specific material from indifferent or non-specific
simple compounds of the surrounding medium, while the crystal
simply adds the molecules found in its supersaturated solution.
This synthetic power of transforming small 'building stones' into
the complicated compounds specific for each orga