Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/213

 CHAPTER V.

THE SPECIFIC FORM. ITS ACQUISITION. ITS REPARATION.

§ 1. Specific form not special to living beings—Connected with the whole of the material conditions of the body and the medium—Is it a property of chemical substance?—§ 2. Acquisition and re-establishment of the specific form—Normal regeneration—Accidental regeneration in the protozoa and the plastids—In the metazoa.

The Specific Form is not Peculiar to Living Beings.—The position of a specific form—the acquisition of this typical form progressively realized—the re-establishment when some accident has altered it—these are the features which we consider distinctive of living beings, from the protophytes and the lowest protozoa to the highest animals. Nothing gives a better idea of the unity and the individuality of the living being than the existence of this typical form. We do not mean, however, that this characteristic belongs to the living being alone, and is by itself capable of defining it. We repeat that this is not a case with any characteristic. In particular the typical form belongs to crystal as well as to living beings.

''The Specific Form depends on the sum of Material Conditions of the Body and the Medium.''—The consideration of mineral bodies shows us form dependent