Whether motion disintegrates or integrates is, I apprehend, a question
of conditions. A whirlpool in a stream may remain in the same spot for
any imaginable time. Yet it is the effect of the motion of the particles
of the water in that spot which continually integrate themselves into
the whirlpool and disintegrate themselves from it The whirlpool is
permanent while the conditions last, though its constituents incessantly
change. Living bodies are just such whirlpools. Matter sets into them
in the shape of food,--sets out of them in the shape of waste products.
Their individuality lies in the constant maintenance of a characteristic
form, not in the preservation of material identity.