60 THE EVOLUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 



because life is something so fundamentally different 

 from non-living, that living substance must necessarily 

 be fundamentally different from non-living substance, 

 in its whole composition also. 



This however is a mere creed ; it is perfectly concei- 

 vable, that life is the resultant of forces in very compli- 

 cated chemical bodies, mutatis mutandis in the same 

 way, as heat can be the resultant of forces, in a mixture 

 of less complicated chemical bodies. 



As littleas in thelatter case each particleof the chemical 

 bodies which we mix, need be hot, as little each particle 

 in the former cases, need be living. The fact demon- 

 strated by BECQUEREL of Paris, in KAMERLINGH ONNES 

 Laboratory at Leiden, that seeds, enclosed in tubes de- 

 void of air, immersed during 3 weeks in fluid air, and 

 after that during 77 hours in liquid hydrogren, thus ha- 

 ving been exposed to a cold of 190 till 253 Celsius 

 below the freezing point of water, sprouted all the 

 same, after having subsequently been kept for a year 

 and a half in a vacuum, goes far to throw grave doubt 

 on the living nature of the protoplasm, present in those 

 seeds. 



Deprived of water and gases, and under a pressure of 

 almost nihil, exposed to extreme cold, this plasma 

 must have lost its colloidal phase, and can not have 

 shown even the slightest traces of physical or chemical 

 signs of life; we can not designate such a condition, 

 scientifically speaking, by any other name than death. 



Yet this plasma is able to show afterwards all nor- 

 mal appearances of growth etc. ,so that there is every rea- 

 son to believe that a system of in itself non-living par- 



