328 Kansas Academy of Science. 



Matter in protoplasm, while subject to the physical and 

 chemical forces, is evidently ruled by a higher influence, which 

 the vitalist terms life, and it is the varying needs of this entity 

 which causes ceaseless change in the matter with which it is 

 associated. Its methods of doing work are so radically differ- 

 ent from the forces that build the crystal or that control mat- 

 ter in any form that it must be placed in a class far removed 

 from that in which we place those forms of energy known as 

 matter and electricity. 



3. What does life inherit? 



Life, while associated with what we conventionally term 

 energy and matter, builds of the matter, through energy, tiny 

 cells containing protoplasm in the form of nucleus, cytoplasm, 

 and cell wall. These cells, while alive, can absorb nutriment 

 and oxygen; make of the one more protoplasm, and use the 

 other to release energy ; excrete matter no longer useful ; by an 

 internal set of activities make an exact division of the nucleus 

 into equal parts, and a more or less equal division of the 

 cytoplasm and cell wall, resulting in two complete cells ; re- 

 ceive sensations from the environment ; change shape of cell ; 

 and do or not do many other things. 



The human infant begins its existence as an individual the 

 moment an active sperm cell fuses with a sluggish egg cell. 

 Potentially, this nucleated spheroid of protoplasm, about one 

 one-hundredth of an inch in diameter, is the future child ; but 

 the chemist could not find in its composition the slightest dif- 

 ference between this cell and that of a thousand other cells of 

 both plants and animals. When the fusion of the sperm and 

 egg cells is complete the conjugate receives nothing further 

 from its parents, except food, oxygen, shelter, and possibly 

 nerve suggestions from the mother, till it ends its parasitic 

 life on the day of its birth and becomes an independent or- 

 ganism. In the meantime the fertilized egg cell has become 

 many million specialized cells through subdivision and growth. 

 It first divides and becomes two cells physically equal in all 

 their parts, as revealed by the microscope. At this point no 

 one could tell whether the future organism will be a plant or 

 animal. But the next cell division decides the question, for 

 the two cells so divide as to make a square, and not a straight 

 line as they would have done had they belonged to the plant 



