68 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



ergy increased) by training and racing live longer tlian do 

 tlieir untrained brothers and sisters who did not have 

 their stores of energy augmented by special exercise. 

 Here is a third identification of life itself being a form 

 of common mechanical energy. Those horses live long- 

 est which have stored in their systems by acquirement 

 the greatest number of foot-pounds of energy. 



Women produce children, and in doing so they exer- 

 cise many bodily organs not exercised by women who pro- 

 duce no children. Such exercise builds up energy in the 

 exercised organs just the same as other exercise builds 

 up energy in other organs. Statistics gathered by Cattell 

 and by Bell show that those women who build the great- 

 est amount of energy into their systems by this process 

 before they are forty-five, are the ones who live the great- 

 est number of years after they are forty-five. Here 

 again we identify life as being a form of energy by show- 

 ing that increase of energy means increase of life, and 

 that we may build onto our inheritance by our own ef- 

 forts. 



Longevity is that power within the organism which 

 prolongs life, and is known to be an inherited thing. In 

 trotters, the offspring of those horses which have their 

 powers developed by training and racing live longer than 

 do the offspring of their untrained relatives. In human 

 beings, when healthy women develop their bodily powers 

 by producing many children, the later born children live 

 longer than do the earlier born ones. The first of these 

 items is taken from records published in The Horse 

 World of Buffalo. The second is from statistics I gath- 

 ered from genealogies. Both identify life as being energy ; 

 both make it clear that we can add to our lives by our own 

 efforts ; and both show that what is built up in that way 

 is carried over by heredity to the next generation. 



