306 STRUCTURE-FORMING CAPACITY. 



a number of elements the physical forces of which are for 

 the time in abeyance. Although within the spheres of each 

 other's attractions, they do not combine. There is no 

 evidence of any chemical forces or affinities in the living 

 particle. When the living matter dies, however, all is 

 changed, and in a moment. We may easily learn more 

 concerning the forces of lifeless matter by investigating life, 

 than we have ascertained concerning life force by our ob- 

 servations and physical and chemical investigations upon 

 inanimate matter. 



Whatever may be the nature of the supposed force or 

 power which influences the particles of matter during life, it 

 is certain that the matter is somehow directed, controlled, 

 and arranged, while no material forces or properties are 

 known to be capable of discharging such functions. It is 

 therefore quite in accordance with reason to conclude that 

 it is power, as distinct from matter, force, or material pro- 

 perty, which does direct, control, and arrange, and is 

 capable of preparing and of making ready for the advent of 

 new power. Such capacities are utterly foreign to ordinary 

 matter of every kind. We must therefore, as it seems to 

 me, conclude that it is by the transmission of power to 

 matter, rather than by the bodily transference of millions of 

 particles of matter having particular properties and detached 

 from matter having similar properties, that inheritable pecu- 

 liarities are handed down from parent to offspring. And it 

 must be borne in mind that structure-forming capacity 

 which is not even rendered evident until forty or fifty years 

 shall have passed since the original germ-speck originated 

 in the parent, may affect pounds weight of matter, not one 

 grain of which will be acquired until long after every atom of 



