48. Herein we see illustrated the great law of organized activity, that it is a simultaneity of opposite tendencies, as organized matter is a synthesis of compositions and decompositions, always tending towards equilibrium and disturbance, storing up energy and liberating it. Unlike what is observed in unorganized matter, the conditions of waste bring with them conditions of repair, and thus--within certain limits--every loss in one direction is compensated by gain in another. There is a greater flow of nutrient material, or, more properly speaking, a greater assimilation of it by the tissue, where there has been made a greater opening for it by previous disintegration. The alkaline state of the nutrient material, and the acid state of the material that has been used,--the alkaline state which characterizes repose and assimilation, and the acid state which characterizes activity and deassimilation, are but cases of this general law; on the synthesis of these opposite tendencies depends the restless change, together with the continued specific integrity, of organized matter. 49. The state of organization may therefore be defined as the _molecular union of the proximate principles of the three classes in reciprocal dissolution_. An organism is formed of matter thus organized, which exists in two states--the _amorphous_ and the _figured_. The amorphous substances are liquid, semi-liquid, and solid; the figured are the cells, fibres, and tubes, called “anatomical elements.” For these I prefer the term suggested, I believe, by Milne Edwards, namely, _organites_, because they are the individual elements which mainly constitute the organs, and are indeed by many biologists considered as elementary organisms. These organites, which go to form the tissues, and by the tissues the organs, have their specific form, volume, structure, and chemical reactions. They exist in textures or tissues, or separately (e. g. blood corpuscles), and are in many respects like the simplest organisms known, such as Monads, Vibrios, Amœbæ, etc.