Introduction" 9 



all organic tissues, water is an essential constituent of each 

 molecule, and gives to combined molecular masses a degree 

 of plasticity, adaptability, and gradual response to envir- 

 onal changes that at once suggest and foreshadow organic 

 molecular linkages. 



But for the upbuilding of complex organic molecules the 

 writer considers that gradually, by action and reaction be- 

 tween increasingly complex colloid molecules, a more con- 

 densed form of energy than the duplo-electric developed, 

 which he has named the biotic. This arose as environal 

 terrestrial factors became appropriate to, and stimulating 

 for its development. 



Definite heat of, and heat-radiations from, the earth; 

 definite chemic actions and reactions, that resulted in link- 

 ages into complex mineralogic molecules; definite currents 

 of electric energy through definite bodies of varied but 

 varying conductivity or resistance; definite formations of 

 mixed and complex colloid bodies from dissolved minerals; 

 these and many like conditions that must have evolved as 

 the earth itself evolved as a steadily cooling mass, might 

 and probably did favor biotic energy-condensation. 



This energy, conducted only through complex colloid 

 molecular masses, stimulated the formation of many of the 

 simpler and ultimately highly complex bodies like proto- 

 plasm of the organic realm, which then became its special 

 vehicle or conductor. In relation to environment such high- 

 ly organized energy-matter complexes showed exactly those 

 responses that were more or less characteristic of all bodies, 

 but specially of colloid ones, as Le Bon and S. Le Due have 

 indicated (5;^;passim), and as the present author has pre- 

 sented in his work (1:31). So the five great physiological 

 activities of irritability or capacity for molecular response 

 to environment, nutrition or the absorption and dispos'mg 

 of new particles to replace those removed, respiration or 

 the removal of superfluous effete particles — a phenomenon 

 feebly shown by some inorganic colloid bodies, growth or 

 increase in molecular complexity or size or in both, and 

 reproduction or the throwing off of a portion of the whole 

 that would serve to multiply and perpetuate the type; all 

 became stamped on primitive organic bodies as an evolved 



