Physiological Assimilation

Most modern scientists admit that the notion of assimilation is not exhausted by the eventual chemical changes that may take place. Their definition of assimilation, moreover, is most frequently the true expression of reality. To give but one instance, the physiologist Rosenthal defines assimilation as the "peculiar property common to all cells of bringing forth from different materials substances specifically similar to those which pre-exist in those cells". But, in further explaining the concept of assimilation, they frequently mistake its true nature and deny again what they conceded before. In other words, they often refuse to acknowledge that food, in being changed into living substance, participates in properties which in themselves are of a nature totally different from the forces of inorganic matter. +