112 ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 



tations of the most complex forms of vegetable foli- 

 age. 



Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange 

 phsenomena, the properties of the water, and we do not 

 hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they 

 result from the properties of the component elements 

 of the water. We do not assume that a something called 

 "aquosity" entered into and took possession of the 

 oxidated hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then 

 guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets 

 of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. 

 On the contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith 

 that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by 

 and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constit- 

 uents of water to the properties of water, as we are 

 now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the 

 form of its parts and the manner in which they are put 

 together. 



Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, 

 water, and nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their 

 place, under the influence of pre-existing living proto- 

 plasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes 

 its appearance? 



It is true that there is no sort of parity between the 

 properties of the components and the properties of the 

 resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. 

 It is also true that what I have spoken of as the influ- 

 ence of pre-existing living matter is something quite 

 unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the 

 modus operandi of an electric spark, which traverses a 

 mixture of oxygen and hydrogen ? 



What justification is there, then, for the assumption 

 of the existence in the living matter of a something 

 which has no representative, or correlative, in the not 



