When we take the whole of the metabolic functions in organisms together, we may look upon them as the outcome of two opposite chemical processes--on the one hand the building-up of living matter by taking in food (assimilation), and on the other the breaking-down of it in consequence of its vital activity (disassimilation). As in every case the plasm is the active living matter, we may say: _Assimilation_ (or plasma-production) consists in the conversion within the organism into the special plasm of the particular species of food that has been received from without; _disassimilation_ (or plasma-destruction) is the result of the work done by the plasm, which is the cause of its partial decomposition or breakdown. In both respects there is a striking difference between the two great kingdoms of organic nature. The plant kingdom is, on the whole, the agent of assimilation, forming new plasm by synthesis and reduction from inorganic matter. In the animal world, on the contrary, disassimilation preponderates, the plasm received being resolved by oxydation, and the actual energy taken out of it by analysis being converted into heat and motion. Plants are plasmodomous; animals, plasmophagous. Of all the chemical processes the most important, because the most indispensable, for the origin and maintenance of organic life is the constant reconstruction of plasm. We give it the name of plasmodomism (_domeo_=to build up), or carbon-assimilation. Botanists have the habit of late of calling it briefly assimilation, and have thus caused a good deal of misunderstanding. The more common and older meaning of assimilation in animal physiology is, in the widest sense, the intussusception and preparation of the food received. But the carbon-assimilation in plants--what I call plasmodomism--is only the first and original form of plasma-production. It means that the plant is able, under the influence of sunlight, to form carbohydrates, and from these new plasm, out of simple inorganic compounds (water, carbonic acid, nitric acid, and ammonia) by synthesis and reduction. The animal is unable to do this. It has to take its plasm in its food from other organisms--plant-eaters directly, and animal-eaters indirectly. We therefore give the title of _plasmophagous_ to these animal "plasma-eaters." In working up the foreign plasm it has eaten, and converting it into its own specific form of plasm, the animal also accomplishes assimilation; but this animal albumin-assimilation is totally different from the vegetal carbon-assimilation. The fresh-formed animal plasm is then broken up by oxydation, and by this analysis the energy needed for the vital movements is obtained.