No.1] REGENERATIVE ENERGY. 45 
beyond it. He accepts the authority of the chemist and the 
physicist for the fact that the primary elements of the organism 
are identical with those found in inorganic matter, and with 
them repudiates the notion that life is “a force having no con- 
nection with primary energy or motion.” But no one disputes 
the fact that the living organism represents special combinations 
of matter and force, and displays phenomena which find no 
parallel in non-living matter. Hence it does not appear at all 
irrational to conclude that vital phenomena are the manifesta- 
tions of special forces, resultants of course, and yet guzte unlike 
the elementary forces from which they are derived. 
If from the same elements by different chemical combina- 
tions, we get new substances, differing widely zz¢er se in their 
chemico-physical constitution, and totally unlike their primary 
constituents, then why not new forces in the same way? The 
chemist and the physicist agree in referring the differences of 
substances to a dynamical cause, and their mechanical concep- 
tions do not prevent, but compel them to ascribe a specific 
energy to each different atom and molecule. Im spite of the 
tendency of physical thought to regard “all matter as one and 
all energy as one,’’ chemistry and physics are built up on the 
assumption that chemical elements are unlike, and that in dif- 
ferent modes of combination is given the basis for that infinite 
variety of substances with which we meet. If the primary 
energy is in each case called by the same name, “ polarity,” it 
is nevertheless understood that these polarities are as unlike as 
the elements which manifest them. It is just here that we see 
the foundation for those gwalztative distinctions which, in the 
mind of the biologist, must ever overshadow in importance the 
physicist’s factors of quantity and motion. 
All physical explanations, no less than biological, lead ulti- 
mately to the conception of intrinsic forces. The chemist’s 
unit, like the physicist’s, is the embodiment of energy. From 
a comparatively few atom-energies an endless number of mole- 
cule-energies are built up; these aggregate in units of a higher 
order, some statical, others dynamical ; and so on through what 
Nageli calls mzcelle and micellar aggregates, until we arrive 
at the living cell. In this ascending series each new aggregate 
represents a unit, the individuality of the parts being merged 
in that of the whole. The grounds for distinguishing various 
