Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/307

 physical characters of the body—solidity in the crystal, semi-fluidity in the cellular protoplasm. If we compare the inorganic liquid matter with the semi-fluid organized matter, we recognize that the addition of substance takes place in the same manner in each—i.e., by interposition. If we add a soluble salt to a fluid, the molecules of the salt separate themselves and interpose themselves between those of the fluid. There is, therefore, nothing especially mysterious or particularly vital about the process of intussusception. Applied to fluid protoplasm, it is merely the diffusion that ordinarily occurs in mixed liquids.