336 



ENERGIA. It may be looked upon as the primary source of 

 the force appearing in the phenomena of vitality." Now, 

 the energy possessed by any chemical aggregate is the force 

 •which binds together its component atoms and which is 

 liberated when they are dissevered. The energy of a colloid 

 is therefore nothing more than the amount which is accumu- 

 lated or set free in its " continual metastasis ;" the difference 

 between its energy and tliat of an explosive compound like 

 potassium picrate is, that the one is actual and the 

 other potential. It is impossible to correlate the energy of 

 a colloid more than of a crystalloid with vitality, because 

 they are one and the same thing. The reason why colloids 

 lend themselves to the exhibition of vital phenomena is 

 not because they possess actual energy, but by reason of 

 their capacity for undergoing small amounts of molecular 

 rearrangements so as to adjust themselves to corresponding 

 small rearrangements of external conditions. In a statically 

 equilibrated crystalloid such a capacity is either impossible 

 or very much restricted. It is easy to represent to the 

 mind at any rate one reason of this ; the chemical molecule 

 of the colloid is voluminous compared with the chemical 

 molecule of the crystalloid, the number of actual atoms con- 

 tained in the one being probably always greatly in excess of 

 that contained in the other. Rearrangements of the atoms 

 as the result of recombinations of the interatomic forces 

 must therefore be possible to a much greater extent in the 

 larger molecule than in the smaller. Yet Graham's principle 

 must not be pushed too far ; it must be kept in view that 

 colloidal characters are not the cause, but only a phase of 

 that capacity for responsive molecule readjustment, of which 

 vital properties are the highest exponent, and the exbibition 

 of these last may never be reached at all l)y substances like 

 hydrated silicic acid, which are nevertlieless characteristically 

 colloidal. 



According, however, to Dr. Bastian, the life, or in other 

 Avords, the aggregate set of phenomena displayed by one of 

 the simplest bodies which we call a living thing, is as much 

 the essential and inseparable attribute of the particular mole- 

 cular collocation which displays it as the properties of the 

 crystal are essential to tlie kinds and modes of aggregation 

 of the molecules which enter into its composition.^ 

 But the defect of this view is its one-sidedness, an 

 essential characteristic of life being the duality of its 

 relations — the continued balancing of those which are 

 internal and those which are external. It is not the internal 

 ' ' Nature,' vol. ii, p. 174. 



