OF VITAL FORCE, AND THE CONDITIONS OF ITS EXERCISE. 147 



the material for constructing an organ or instrument, and the force that forms 

 an ideal plan of the instrument or organ, and constructs it of this material. 



The phenomena of living beings, when the organism is fully developed, and 

 its functions performed in all the energy of life, cannot be accurately analyzed. 

 The actions of a living organism are so interwoven with each other ; they are 

 so mutually intermingled and sustaining, that the order of their precedence is 

 not clearly observable. But in the hatching of an egg, or the germination of 

 a seed, the development of an organism can be observed through all its stages. 



An examination of the organic materials from which the tissues of the newly 

 formed chick are constituted, shows them to be substances that had no existence 

 in the original egg ; these transformations of albumen, undeniably chemical in 

 nature, take place only at a definite temperature. Keep the egg at a heat of 

 90, the development will not proceed beyond the first step; let the heat be 

 maintained at 110 F., and the development is equally arrested. An exact 

 temperature is thus shown, under the germ-force, to be the excitor of the special 

 chemical actions that generate from albumen special plasmata for organic struc- 

 ture. 



But these special chemical actions and the formations of the specific plasms 

 for the different tissues, occur only in the presence of germ-force. The germ 

 in these operations appears to act in the mode designated by Berzelius, as cat- 

 alytic or by the action of presence. When a germ has not been produced, 

 however, as in an unfecundated egg, and the egg be exposed to a heat of 98 to 

 100 F., and to atmospheric air, then, instead of the transformation of albumen 

 into organic plasma, and next into organized structure, the ordinary chemical 

 action of putrefaction is excited, and the products are sulphuretted hydrogen 

 and sulphuret of ammonia. 



This fact proves that germ-force is the determinative cause of the special 

 chemico-organic action necessary to organization ; but there is nothing that shows 

 identity between germ-force, the radical and primary organic force, heat and 

 chemical force. 



But the phenomena which most unquestionably characterize Organic Nature, 

 are the perpetual production of special organic matter, and repetitions in suc- 

 cessive generations of the same typical forms, infinite in number and variety, 

 expressed in the organization of living beings. Organic forms proceed from form- 

 less plastic matter now, as at the beginning. But the most striking and familiar 

 feature distinguishing organic forms, at once mysterious and indefinable, is the 

 permanency of the created form, while the material expressing that form is the 

 most unstable and transitory of substances. Two forces are in constant antago- 

 nism ; the organic typical, or modal force, creative and preservative of the organic 

 form; and the chemical forces of the material molecules that keep the sub- 

 stances of the forms in endless change. The force that thus controls molecular 

 actions, and impels them to evolve from matter typical organic forms, is the 

 exclusive attribute of Organic Nature. It is transmitted from generation to 

 generation, and is the endowment of the germ; Grerm-force and Organic force 

 are identical. 



The organic, germ, or formative force presides over the initial phenomena of 

 life, and preserves the integrity of the organs and their functions in after years. 

 It opposes a resistance to all disturbing agents, and shows itself to be the "vis 

 medicatrix naturae." 



It is not to be understood, however, that it is self-acting; it is dependent upon 

 exterior agents for power to develop it into activity. Of this we have an ex- 

 ample in the seed, which, though possessed of vitality, or the power of being 

 roused into life, will never germinate unless supplied with materials of growth, 

 heat, oxygen and water. If any one of these essentials be absent, disease results ; 

 if all are wanting, death ensues. 



