LIFE CREATES ENERGY. 



and might just as well be left out of the sentence altogether. 

 If, therefore, the phrase, vital force, were thus applied, I 

 think it would be most incorrectly applied, for is not the 

 potential energy of a given weight of fat and muscle exactly the 

 same in a dead body as in a living one ? How, therefore, can 

 potential energy be the same as vital force ? Vital force or 

 power ceases to manifest itself when a living thing dies, but 

 the potential energy of the matter of its body is constant 

 in its amount. 



Dr. Odling says, that some physiologists seem to infer 

 that chemists and physicists are insensible to those important 

 distinctions existing between living and dead matter, which 

 they, on the other hand, " profess to explain by declaring 

 the former to be possessed and the latter dispossessed of 

 vital force." Dr. Odling believes " that chemists appreciate 

 in its fullest extent what may be termed * the mystery of 

 life.' Chemists and physicists are well assured that, be life 

 what it may, it is not a generator but only a transformer of 

 external force" as if some physiologist had said something to 

 justify the inference that he supposed external force was 

 generated by life or any living thing. Such a man does not 

 live. 



But my friend, unlike some who have written from the 

 purely physico-chemical side has not really missed the point 

 upon which some of us differ so entirely from the new 

 school. From that which he advances as the opinion of 

 physicists and chemists I differ as regards the paramount 

 importance which I would attach to the living thing as a 

 transformer of force, and, as will afterwards appear, concern- 

 ing the manner in which it transforms, and the principles 

 upon which the transformation is conducted. Many phy- 



