THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



in the autumn they contain xanthophyll. Such, I take 

 it, is a classic explanation of life by biologists/^ 



With time, organic chemistry has lost its connec- 

 tion with biology and has become simply the study of 

 the compounds of the chemical element, carbon. With 

 the rise of physiology and other branches of biology 

 which are classed under the group name of the med- 

 ical sciences, a new attempt has been made to fuse 

 biology and chemistry. We now have the border 

 science of biochemistry which is said to include the 

 chemistry of the living organism. The subject is a 

 most important one and much has been discovered in 

 regard to such functions as digestion,, nerve actions, 

 etc. But biochemistry does not touch what we call the 

 chemistry of life. 



When a nerve action occurs, we find accompany- 

 ing changes in temperature, electrical charges, me- 

 chanical and chemical properties of the substance of 

 the nerve tissue, and we can provoke nerve action by 

 physical and chemical stimuli. But is this not totally 

 different from claiming that nerve action 2S a chem- 

 ical or physical phenomenon^ To show that fatigue 

 is accompanied by an excess of acid in the muscular 

 tissue or to show that if a muscle is alternately placed 

 in an alkaline and in an acid fluid, it will alternately 

 contract and lengthen does not touch the problem 

 why or how our muscles lengthen and shorten. We 



19 In the present neglect of the study of Greek it may aid the ap- 

 preciation of this scientific explanation to point out that phyllon 

 means a leaf, chloros means green, and xanthos means yellow. 



C 274 ] 



