18 THE PRESENT CONDITION 



derived. Its bones become mere carbonate and phosphate 

 of lime ; the matter of its flesh, and of its other parts, 

 becomes, in the long run, converted into carbonic acid, 

 into water, and into ammonia. You will now, perhaps, 

 understand the curious relation of the animal with the 

 plant, of the organic with the inorganic world, which is 

 shown in this diagram. 



The plant gathers these inorganic materials together 

 and makes them up into its own substance. The animal 

 eats the plant and appropriates the nutritious portions to 

 its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of the useless 

 matters ; and, finally, the animal itself dies, and its whole 

 body is decomposed and returned into the inorganic 

 world. There is thus a constant circulation from one 

 to the other, a continual formation of organic life from 

 inorganic matters, and as constant a return of the matter 

 of living bodies to the inorganic world ; so that the 

 materials of which our bodies are composed are largely, 

 in all probability, the substances which constituted the 

 matter of long extinct creations, but which have in the 

 interval constituted a part of the inorganic world. 



Thus we come to the conclusion, strange at first sight, 

 that the MATTER constituting the living world is identical 

 with that which forms the inorganic world. And not 

 less true is it that, remarkable as are the powers or, in 

 other words, as are the FORCES which are exerted by 

 living beings, yet all these forces are either identical with 

 those which exist in the inorganic world, or they are con- 

 vertible into them ; I mean in just the same sense as the 

 researches of physical philosophers have shown that heat 

 is convertible into electricity, that electricity is convert- 

 ible into magnetism, magnetism into mechanical force or 

 chemical force, and any one of them with the other, each 

 being measurable in terms of the other, even so, I say, 

 that great law is applicable to the living world. Consider 

 why is the skeleton of this horse capable of supporting the 

 masses of flesh and the various organs forming the living 

 body, unless it is because of the action of the same forces 

 of cohesion which combines together the particles of matter 

 composing this piece of chalk ? What is there in the 

 muscular contractile power of the animal but the force 

 which is expressible, and which is in a certain sense con- 

 vertible, into the force of gravity which it overcomes ? Or, 

 If you go to more hidden processes, in what does the process 



