12 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



nary temperatures lose all semblance of affinities and cannot be 

 made to unite. Now the point of this chemical disquisition is 

 to make it plain that orderly arrangement and phenomena fol- 

 low from orderly motions, and one has no need for inventing 

 other agencies when the latter are known to be present, as is 

 true in this case. One may safely postulate that ordinary 

 matter possesses such inherent qualities as enable it to as- 

 sume geometric forms that depend upon temperature. 



But the matter we know possesses other qualities that have 

 to be reckoned with. First it possesses energy even when it 

 is seemingly quiescent. For example when carbon, sulphur 

 and saltpeter are mechanically mixed together, as one might 

 mix sand and salt, we have a mixture that possesses a relatively 

 large amount of energy, which we have not put into it. The 

 mixture simply makes the energy available. A lump of coal 

 might lie around and seem to be as helpless and inert as any 

 stone, but we drive our steam engines with its like and heat 

 our houses, and civilization depends upon it to-day because it 

 is loaded with energy which a furnace makes available. The 

 energy is in it, and if it is not apparent under ordinary circum- 

 stances it is evidently not correct to speak of it and reason 

 about it as if it were really inert and dead. One might liken 

 it to a sleeping rather than to a dead man. 



What is called the dynamic theory of matter, is an implied 

 denial of inert matter. 



A pound of hydrogen and eight pounds of oxygen contain 

 energy enough to wreck a large building. In like manner the 

 substances used for foods are loaded with energy in a shape 

 available for use in living structures, so one has no need to as- 

 sume some external source of energy for the purposes of any 

 living thing, but this energy resides in the atoms, for mole- 

 cules are but aggregates of atoms, and there is nothing in 

 molecules which was not before in their constituents. This 

 energy is not all of it, nor any considerable part of it, due to 

 their temperature, that is, it is not to be measured by the temper- 

 ature, for it is evident that such a structure as I have de- 

 scribed is itself an embodiment of energy, for it consists in a 

 rotary movement of something, at an extremely rapid rate. 



