ON CATAGENESIS. 433 



less all the energies of vegetable protoplasm soon became automatic. 

 The plants in general, in the persons of their protist ancestors, 

 soon left a free-swimming life and became sessile. Their lives 

 thus became parasitic, more automatic, and in one sense degen- 

 erate. 



The animal line may have originated in this wise. Some indi- 

 vidual protists, perhaps accidentally, devoured some of their fel- 

 lows. The easy nutrition which ensued was probably pleasura- 

 ble, and once enjoyed was repeated, and soon became a habit. 

 The excess of energy thus saved from the laborious process of 

 making protoplasm was available as the vehicle of an extended 

 consciousness. From that day to this, consciousness has aban- 

 doned few if any members of the animal kingdom. In many of 

 them it has specialized into more or less mind. Organization 

 to subserve its needs has achieved a multifarious development. 

 There is abundant evidence to show that the permanent and the 

 successful forms have ever been those in which motion, and sensi- 

 bility have been preserved, and most highly developed. 



This review of the history of living organisms has been epito- 

 mized in the following language : ''Evolution of living types is 

 then a succession of elevation of platforms, on which succeeding 

 ones have built. The history of one horizon of life is that its 

 own completion but prepares the way for a higher one, furnish- 

 ing the latter with conditions of a still further development. 

 Thus the vegetable kingdom died, so to speak, that the animal 

 kingdom might live, having descended from an animal stage to 

 subserve the function of food for animals. The successive types of 

 animals first stimulated the development of the most susceptible 

 to the conflict, in the struggle for existence, and afterward fur- 

 nished them with food." 



V. CATAGENESIS OF INORGANIC ENERGY. 



If the principles adopted in the preceding pages be true, it is 

 highly probable that all forms of energy have originated in the 

 process of running down or specialization from the primitive 

 energy. 



In the department of physics I am not at home, and touch 

 upon it merely to carry out to a necessary conclusion the hy- 

 pothesis presented in the preceding pages. It may be that physi- 

 cists and chemists may find value in the suggestions which come 

 from the side of biology. A cursory perusal of the general hy- 

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