OF ORGANIC NATURE 



17 



INORGANIC WORLD. 



Carbonic Acid. "Wnt^r. Ammonia. 



Salines. 



VEGETABLE WORLD. 



(Fig. 3.) 



ANIMAL WORLD. 



tions to its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of 

 the useless matters ; and, finally, the animal itself dies, 

 and its whole body is decomposed and returned into 

 the inorganic world. There is thus a constant circula- 

 tion from one to the other, a continual formation of 

 organic life from inorganic matters, and as constant a 

 return of living bodies to the inorganic world ; so that 

 the materials of which our bodies are composed are 

 largely, in all probability, the substances which con- 

 stituted the matter of long extinct creations, but which 

 have in the interval constituted a part of the inorganic 

 world. 



Thus we come to the conclusion, strange at first 

 sight, that the Matter constituting the living world is 

 identical with that wdiich forms the inorganic world. 

 And not less true is it, that, remarkable as are the 

 powers or, in other words, as are the Forces which are 

 exerted by living beings, yet all these forces are either 

 identical with those which exist in the inorganic world, 

 or they are convertible into them ; I mean in just the 

 same sense as the researches of physical philosophers 

 have shown that heat is convertible into electricity, 



