38 The Significance of Chemical Molecules 



latter have been, even chemically, only very incompletely 

 investigated. 



Of course, this consideration must not keep us from 

 utilizing the great truths of chemistry in the explanation 

 of life processes. Haeckel, and many other investigators 

 after him, have pointed out the great significance, for 

 such an explanation, of the power of carbon to combine 

 in the most varied relations with other elements. ''This, 

 in its way, unique property of carbon we must designate 

 as the basis of all pecularities of the so-called organic 

 compounds.''^ The differences, which occur in the 

 growth of organic and inorganic individuals, are due to 

 the more complex chemical composition and the power 

 of imbibition of many carbon-compounds,^ et cetera. 



In chemistry also this importance of carbon has been 

 emphasized. In his Viezvs on Organic Chemistry, van't 

 Hoff^ says : "From the chemical properties of carbon 

 it appears that this element is able, with the help of two 

 or three others, to form the numberless bodies which are 

 necessary for the manifold needs of a living being; from 

 their almost equal tendency to combine with hydrogen 

 and oxygen, follows the capacity of the carbon-com- 

 pounds to be adapted alternately for processes of reduc- 

 tion and of oxydation as the simultaneous existence of a 

 vegetable and an animal kingdom requires." And, after 

 a discussion of the influence of temperature on the change 

 of the chemical property of carbon, he continues : ''There- 

 fore, one does not go too far in assuming that the ex- 

 istence of the vegetable and animal world is the enor- 



iHaeckel, E. GcnereUe Morpholgie. 1: 121. Berlin. 1886. 



2Loc. cit. p. 166, and Haeckel, E. Die Perigenesis der Plastidule. 

 p. 34. 1876. 



^Van't Hoff. Ansichfcn iibcr die organ'ische Chcmic. 1: 26. 1878. 



