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 CHAPTER VI.

NUTRITION.

FUNCTIONAL ASSIMILATION. FUNCTIONAL DESTRUCTION. ORGANIC DESTRUCTION. ASSIMILATING SYNTHESIS.

The extreme importance of nutrition—§ 1. Effect of vital activity—Destruction or growth—Distinction between the living substance and the reserve-stuff mingled with it—Organic destruction—Destruction of reserve-stuff—Destruction of living matter—Growth of living matter—§ 2. The two categories of vital phenomena—Foundations of the idea of functional destruction—The two kinds of phenomena of vitality—Criticism of Claude Bernard—Current views—Criticism of Le Dantec's new theory of life.—§ 3. Correlation of the two kinds of vital facts—Law of connection—Contradictions in the new theory.—§ 4. The characteristics of nutrition—Its definition—Its permanence—Erroneous idea of the vital vortex—Formative assimilation of reserve-stuff—Formative assimilation of protoplasm—Death, real and apparent.

The Immense Importance of Nutrition.—We now come to the important feature of vitality. All other characteristics of living matter, its unstable equilibrium, its chemical and anatomical organization, the acquisition and the maintenance of a typical form, are only secondary properties, so to speak, subordinate with reference to nutrition. Generation itself is only a mode. Nutrition is the essential attribute of life. It is life itself.