Prof. LeConte on the Correlation of Forces. 147 
chemical compounds, ?.e. the mineral kingdom. Matter separ- 
ated from foree would exist, of course, only as elementary matter 
or onthe first plane ; but united with force, it is thereby raised into 
the second plane and continues to exist most naturally there. 
The third plane is supplied from the second, and the fourth from 
thethird. Thus it is evident that the quantity of matter is great- 
est on the second and least on the fourth plane. Thus nature 
may be likened to a pyramid, of which the mineral kingdom 
forms the base and the animal kingdom the apex. The absolute 
necessity of this arrangement on the principle of the conserva- 
tion of force may be thus expressed. Matter, force, and energy 
are related to one another in physical and organic science some- 
what in the same manner as matter, velocity, and momentum in 
mechanics. The whole energy remaining constant, the greater 
the intensity of the force (the elevation in the scale of existence) 
the less the quantity of matter. Thus necessarily results what 
I have called the pyramid of nature, upon which organic forces 
work upwards and physical and chemical forces downwards. 
13th. As the matter of organisms is not created by them, but 
is only so much matter withdrawn, borrowed as it were, from 
the common fund of matter, to be restored at death; so also 
organic forces cannot be created by organisms, but must be re- 
garded as so much force abstracted from the common fund of 
force, to be again restored, the whole of it, at death*, If then 
vital force is only transformed physical force, is it not possible, 
it will be asked, that physical forces may generate organisms de 
novo? Do not the views presented above support the doctrines 
of equivocal generation ” and of the original creation of species 
by physical forces? I answer that the question of the origina- 
tion of species is left exactly where it was found and where it 
must always remain, viz. utterly beyond the limits of human 
science. But although we can never hope by the light of science 
to know how organisms originated, still all that we do know of 
the laws of the organic and inorganic world seem to negative 
the idea that physical or chemical forces acting upon inorganic 
matter can produce them. Vital force is transformed physical 
force: true, but the necessary medium of this transformation is 
an organized fabric ; the necessary condition of the existence of 
vital force is therefore the previous existence of an organism. 
As the existence of physical forces cannot even be conceived 
without the previous existence of matter as its necessary sub- 
stratum, so the existence of vital force is inconceivable without 
the previous existence of an organized structure as its necessary 
substratum. In the words of Dr. Carpenter, “ It is the speciality 
of the material substratum thus furnishing the medium or in- 
strument of the metamorphosis which establishes and must ever 
* Carpenter, Phil. Trans, 1850, p. 755. 
