260 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. I. 



That the plant and the animal are living, is evident to them, but 

 they assume that the air, the water and the earth, the elements from 

 which the plant grows and is fed, are dead ; that life is a myster- 

 ious something which comes from without, and is extraneous to 

 the organism. Perhaps we may trace the origin of this con- 

 eeption to the ancient legend, which appears in more than 

 one form, of a human body fashioned out of dead matter and 

 waiting for vivifying breath or fire. The student of inorganic 

 nature, however, soon learns to recognize the fact that all matter 

 is instinct with activities, and finds that a great number of those 

 processes which were formerly regarded as functions of organized 

 bodies are really common to these and to inorganic matter. The 

 phenomena of gravitation, of liirht and of electricity, the difi'usion 

 and transpiration of gases and liquids, the crystallogenic process, 

 and the peculiar relations of colloids, are all. when rightly under- 

 stood, manifestations of energies and activities which forbid us 

 to speak of matter as dead. To all of these dynamical (or as they 

 are generally called, physical) activities of matter, supervene those 

 processes which we name chemical, and which give rise to new 

 and specifically distinct inorganic forms. The attaining of indi- 

 viduality by matter, which has always seemed to me the greatest 

 step in the progress of nature, is first seen in the crystal, but 

 therein the forces of matter are in a static condition, except so far 

 as certain dynamical relations are concerned. It is not until solid 

 matter rises from the crystalline to the higher condition of the 

 colloid, that it becomes capable of absorption, diffusion and even 

 of assimilation ; that, in a word, it assumes relations to the exter- 

 nal world which show that it possesses an individuality higher 

 than the crystal, and is, in fact, endowed with many of the 

 activities belonging to those masses of colloidal matter which 

 biologists have agreed to call living. 



In these phenomena we have the first developments of indivi- 

 duality and of organization, and I think that the careful student 

 who endeavours with a strong mental grasp to seize the true 

 relations of things will see that we have here to do, not with a 

 new activity from without, but with a new and higher develop- 

 ment of a force which is inherent in matter, and thus manifests 

 itself at a certfiin stage in chemicul development. He will then, 

 in the words of a philosophic poet, 



" See through this air, this ocean and this earth, 

 All matter quick, and bursting into birth." 



