The Evolution of the Sciences 



can decompose more than a million times its 

 weight of oxygenated water, just as rennet acts 

 on milk. 



And what is still more remarkable, this 

 platinum is rendered inactive, killed, in a word, 

 by heat, sulphuretted hydrogen, corrosive sub- 

 limate, that is to say, by the very agents which 

 kill living matter, so that the mineral kingdom 

 produces bodies which might by their action 

 be confounded with the apparently most 

 characteristic agents of life. The course of 

 physiological chemistry is thus clearly traced. 

 It gradually compels the reactions of living 

 matter to enter the enlarged field 01 general 

 chemistry ; and if its work is far from complete 

 nobody could to-day be found to repeat the 

 famous ignorabimus of Du Bois-Reymond, and 

 to declare that in life there are things which 

 will always escape scientific research. 



But, more than by its products, life is 

 characterised at first sight by the forms which 

 it creates composed forms which are reproduced 

 indefinitely according to the laws of heredity, 



elementary forms constituted by cells and 



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