CHEMICAL CHANGE IN PABULUM. 81 



admit fat possibility of the existence of any other phenomena 

 in living beings than those to which he refers. 



Nevertheless, in some respects, it will seem to the reader 

 that I even seem to go farther than many of those who 

 adopt the physical theory of life, because not only do I 

 admit that the production of many of the compounds 

 found in the secretions and in the blood, are due to 

 physical and chemical reactions, but that muscular and 

 nervous actions are a consequence of physical and chemical 

 changes. Every one knows that many of the phenomena 

 which are now generally considered to make up "the life " 

 of the fully formed organism, are indeed physical phe- 

 nomena. But then how very much there remains, as it 

 were, behind these to be explained ! Of this, any physicist 

 would be convinced, were he to spend but a short time in 

 simply observing the changes which take place during the 

 life of the simplest living thing. The physical phenomena 

 upon which physicists dwell are but the consequence of 

 prior changes, which changes are of a very complex nature, 

 but not physical. The physicist does not ask how the 

 matters which are decomposed in a living being were pro- 

 duced. He regards their formation as nothing. They are 

 there, and that is enough for him. He traces matter and 

 force into a fully developed organism, and obtains matter 

 and work from an organism, and to him this appears to be 

 all that is worth enquiring about. He seems to think that 

 pabulum goes into a living thing and becomes changed 

 chemically, just as it may be changed in his laboratory, and 

 the results of this change are work and certain compounds 

 which are got rid of. In all this, the living matter which is 

 absolutely essential in every one of these changes without 



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