478 PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



compounds, is rare in nature, where free from organic 

 complications, and is necessarily soon reversed by 

 further reactions. 



In the anagenetic energies, on the other hand, we 

 have a process of building machines, which not only 

 resist the action of catagenesis, but which press the 

 catagenetic energies into their service. In the assimi- 

 lation of inorganic substances they elevate them into 

 higher, that is more complex compounds, and raise 

 the types of energy to their own level. In the devel- 

 opment of molar movements they enable their organ- 

 isms to escape many of the destructive effects of cat- 

 agenetic energy, by enabling them to change their 

 environment; and this is especially true in so far as sen- 

 sation or consciousness is present to them. The ana- 

 genetic energy transforms the face of nature by its 

 power of assimilating and recompounding inorganic 

 matter, and by its capacity for multiplying its individ- 

 uals. In spite of the mechanical destructibility of its 

 physical basis (protoplasm), and the ease with which 

 its mechanisms are destroyed, it successfully resists, 

 controls, and remodels the catagenetic energies for its 

 purposes. 



The anagenetic power of assimilation of the inor- 

 ganic substances is chiefly seen in the vegetable king- 

 dom. Atmospheric air, water, and inorganic salts 

 furnish it with the materials of its physical basis. Then 

 from its own protoplasm it elaborates by a catagenetic 

 retrograde metamorphosis, the non-nitrogenous sub- 

 stances, as wood (cellulose), waxes, and oils, and the 

 nitrogenous alkaloids, and it may take up inorganic 

 substances and deposit them without alteration in its 

 cells. Many of the compounds elaborated by plants 

 and animals have been manufactured of latter time by 



