n6 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



a state pre-eminently indicative of the existence of 

 the latter. Dr. Bose speaks of " lethargic wires." 



Once more: we find the notion of "fatigue" 

 applied to non-living matter by no less an authority 

 on physics than Lord Kelvin in his article on " Elas- 

 ticity " in the Encyclopedia Britannica* It was 

 found in experiments at Glasgow that wires caused 

 to oscillate by torsion came to rest in a shorter time 

 after many previous torsional oscillations than if 

 they had been rested before being submitted to the 

 torsion. Wires that had had a Friday to Monday 

 rest were on Monday much " fresher/' i.e., capable 

 of performing more oscillations than wires which 

 had been kept oscillating from Friday to Monday. 

 Summing up his Lordship says, " there is in elastic 

 solids a molecular friction " which is to be regarded 

 as the cause of " fatigue of elasticity." This is 

 molecular fatigue in the non-living recognised by a 

 writer free from any biological bias. 



As might be expected, the molecular parallelisms 

 between the non-living and the living are most 

 striking when the non-living is some form of chemical 

 mechanism, such as the "sensitive cell" of Bose.f 

 Using an arrangement of brominated silver plates 

 the photo-electric cell and the galvanometer 

 to record changes of E.M.F., it was shown that 

 every kind of response characteristic of a vital 

 organ such as the eye, could be obtained from the 

 non-living mechanism. On this point, Professor 



* W. Thomson, article on " Elasticity," Encyclopedia Britannica, 

 9th edition, vol. vii. p. 802. f Loc. cit. p. 148. 



