MODERN ASPECTS OF THE LIFE-QUESTION. 761 



Another point of interest has reference to the modern views of 

 capillarity. In 1838 J. W. Draper showed that capillarity is an elec- 

 trical phenomenon. Quite recently, Lippmann has developed and ex- 

 tended this view and fully confirmed it. Whenever the free surface 

 of a liquid, curved by capillary action, is electrified it changes its form ; 

 and conversely, when such a surface is made by mechanical means to 

 change its form, an electromotive force is developed. Based upon 

 this principle Lippmann constructed a capillary reversible engine and 

 an extremely sensitive capillary electrometer. The former, when a 

 current of electricity was applied to it, developed mechanical work 

 and ran as a motor. When turned by hand, it became an electro- 

 motor. In the animal organism there are it is true but a few free sur- 

 faces where this action can take place. But Gore has shown that the 

 same phenomenon appears between two liquids in contact, their boun- 

 dary being altered in character by electrification. Indeed, when we 

 consider the production of electricity by osmose, and of heat and elec- 

 tricity both by imbibition, both capillary phenomena, the wonder is 

 not that so much energy is evolved by the organism, but that it is so 

 little. If the physical and chemical changes which take place within 

 the body took place without it, there would be an abundant evolution 

 of energy. Can we doubt that these changes are the cause of the 

 energy exhibited by the organism ? 



Thus far, when we have spoken of a living being, we have had 

 reference to the organism as a whole, and this of a rather complex 

 kind. In this view of the case, however, we find that biological 

 microscopists do not agree with us. " The cell alone," says Kuss, " is 

 the essentially vital element ." Says Beale : " There is in living matter 

 nothing which can be called a mechanism, nothing in which structure 

 can be discerned. A little transparent, colorless material is the seat of 

 these marvelous powers or- properties by which the form, structure, 

 and function of the tissues and organs of all living things are deter- 

 mined." And again, " However much organisms and their tissues in 

 their fully formed state may vary as regards the character, properties, 

 and composition of the formed material, all were first in the condition 

 of clear, transparent, structureless, formless living matter." So Ran- 

 vier : " Cellular elements possess all the essential vital properties of 

 the complete organism." And Allman, in his address as President of 

 the British Association last year, is still more explicit. " Every living 

 being," he says, " has protoplasm as the essential matter of every liv- 

 ing element of its structure. . . . No one who contemplates this spon- 

 taneously moving matter can deny that it is alive. Liquid as it is, it 

 is a living liquid ; organless and structureless as it is, it manifests the 

 essential phenomena of life. . . . Coextensive with the whole of organic 

 nature every vital act being referable to some mode or property of 

 protoplasm it becomes to the biologist what the ether is to the physi- 

 cist." From these quotations it would seem that even in the highest 



