Relations and Transformations of Energy 47 



If then we are to be logically and scientifically fair and con- 

 sistent in our use of terms, irritability, nutrition, growth, and 

 reproduction are all such as should be made to include con- 

 tinuous and related phenomena from the inorganic to the 

 organic stage of cosmic evolution. As yet respiration alone 

 seems to be largely typical of organisms, and is correlated with 

 the highly complex, self-adjustive, and equilibrated colloids 

 that make up these bodies. 



With all the evidence — physical, chemical, geological, and 

 biological — that we now possess of archsean conditions, and 

 of plastic evolving continuity from the inorganic to the organic 

 phase, we would reiterate the already expressed opinion of 

 not a few scientists, that living bodies have arisen in continuous 

 and graded fashion from an inorganic stage, while the same 

 laws that govern inorganic bodies are directly applicable to 

 the organic, except that the latter show more perfect exhibitions 

 of some kind of energy, and probably in connection therewith 

 exhibit conditions of environal interchange or respiration that 

 have not yet or only imperfectly been demonstrated for the 

 inorganic. 



