64 TWO NEW WORLDS 



This greater energy is on a par with the greater 

 electric actions, and with the pace of events gene- 

 rally in the infra- world. Relatively, however, there 

 is no essential difference between infra-chemical 

 phenomena and the chemical phenomena of this 

 world. 



3. Infra-Biology. Given a requisite amount and 

 kind of mechanical, electrical, thermal, and chemical 

 action, an infra-physiological activity looms into the 

 realm of the possible. The fewness of the chemical 

 elements is no bar to infra-biology, since the elements 

 essential to life are comparatively few five or six 

 out of nearly a hundred. 



Our actual evidence of material life is limited to 

 a thin and precarious crust of a single planet, or two 

 planets, Earth and Mars, at the most. There is, of 

 course, nothing to prove that "dead matter" may 

 not be endowed with some kind of rudimentary 

 consciousness. We can certainly distinguish both 

 a rudimentary fatigue and a rudimentary forma- 

 tion of habit in inorganic substances, both pheno- 

 mena which indicate something of the nature of 

 memory. Dr. Bose goes so far as to trace what he 

 calls a response to stimulus in metals. But physi- 

 ological life, properly so called, involves a set of 

 changes and adaptations which are clearly marked 

 off from the changes occurring in dead matter, and 

 which are invariably accompanied if not conditioned 

 by the presence of certain carbon and nitrogen 



