76 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



and chemical phenomena that we find in the rest of nature. 

 All the supposed attributes of life are found also outside living 

 organisms. Life is constituted by the association of physico- 

 chemical phenomena, their harmonious grouping and succession. 

 Harmony is a condition of life." 



But on the succeeding page, after referring to living bodies 

 as being made up of the same chemical elements as inorganic, 

 he says: "Hence life is but a phase in the animation of mineral 

 matter; all matter may be said to have within itself the essence 

 of life, potential in the mineral, actual in the animal and vege- 

 table. The flux and reflux of matter is alternate and incessant, 

 from the mineral world to the living, and back again from the 

 living to the mineral world." 



But here the ^'animation of mineral matter" constitutes the 

 crux. Were we to say and know that "life is but a phase in 

 the thermification, or in the lumification, or in the electrification, 

 of mineral matter, or in all of these combined," we would know 

 the exact lines along which alone experimental study should 

 be carried. But it is the higher and more perfect step of pri- 

 mary animation of matter that is the fundamental need. 



Possibly a more correct and graphic picture of the contrast 

 in energy needed for linking up and holding together inorganic 

 and organic molecules can be obtained if we compare the num- 

 ber of heat calories as related to their chemical formulae, in 

 some well known inorganic bodies, with the chemical formulae 

 of certain important organic bodies. On page 103 a set of the 

 former is given. Though, in virtue of their labile and viscous 

 character, organic colloid molecules may not represent relatively 

 the same expenditure of heat calories, their extremely complex 

 chemical composition, and consequent great amount of stored 

 intra-molecular energy, can readily be estimated by selecting 

 a few examples from well-known plant and animal products. 

 Thus wheat gluten or artolin has the formula: 



C185H288-N 50»3O58 



The serum albumin of vertebrate blood has, according to 

 Kurajeff's analysis (57: 355), the formula: 



C450H720N ii6k?6Oi40 



