extravital

— The biochemist hopes to make protoplasm in a beaker, but in transforming his homogeneous jelly into a ‘sprig of moss’ he will need to utilize agencies not only unexplained, but not even analogous to the postulates or properties now ascribed to unorganized matter. These agencies or properties of life are doubtless as ‘natural’ as those treated in physics and chemistry, but they are different. To call them ‘creative’ or ‘directive’ is, perhaps, open to objection, but they are certainly conservative, coordinative and constructive in a manner and degree for which we have no extravital analogy. The directive idea, however, is by no means extinct among biologists.