Problems of Life and Mind

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHATTEE III. ORGANISM, ORGANISATION AND ORGANIC SUBSTANCE. 45. There is a marked difference between organic and organised substances. The organic are non-living, though capable of living when incorporated in organised tissue (albumen is such a substance); or they may be incapable of living because they have lived, and are products of waste, e.g., urea. The organised substance is a specific combination of organic substances of various kinds, - a combination which is organisation. Any organised substance- is therefore either an independent organism or part of a-more complex organism. Protoplasm, either as- a separate organism, or as a constituent of a tissue, is organised substance. Organic substances are numerous and specific. They are various combinations of proximate principles familiar to the chemist, which may conveniently be ranged under three classes: The first class of organic substances comprises those composed of principles having what is called a mineral origin; these generally quit the organism unchanged as they entered it. The second class comprises those which are crystallisable, and are formed in the organism, and generally quit it in this state as excretions. The third class comprises the colloids, i.e., substances which are coagulable and not crystallisable, and are formed in and decomposed in the organism, thus furnishing the principles of the second class. All the principles are in a state of solution. Water is the chief vehicle of the materials which enter and the materials which quit the organism; and bodies in solution are solvents of others, so that the water, thus acquires new solvent properties. 45a. Two points must be noted respecting organic sub- stances: they are mostly combinations of higher multiples of the elements; and their combinat...