THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 317 



film, we shall see the particles of soot recombining to 

 form the substance of the cigarette, and we can imagine 

 the concomitant combination of the water, carbon 

 dioxide, and other substances formed during the combus- 

 tion with the absorption of kinetic energy. This is not 

 a mere analogy, for the same reversal of ordinary chemi- 

 cal happening occurs whenever a green plant builds up 

 starch from the water and carbon dioxide of the atmos- 

 phere ; and it also occurs whenever a chemical syn- 

 thesis of an " organic " compound, like that of urea by 

 Wohler, or that of the sugars by Fischer, is brought 

 about in the laboratory. In all such syntheses the 

 experimenter reverses the direction of inorganic chemical 

 happening. He may cause endothermic chemical re- 

 actions, reactions accompanied by the absorption of 

 available energy, to take place, and in these kinetic 

 energy becomes transformed into potential energy. 

 All the syntheses of organic compounds so complacently 

 instanced by mechanistic biologists and chemists as 

 indicative of the lack of distinction between the organic 

 and the inorganic point to no such conclusion. Sugar 

 is built up in the cells of the green plant from the in- 

 organic compounds, water, and carbon dioxide, and is 

 therefore a compound prepared by life — that of the 

 plant organism. But sugar may also be built up in 

 the laboratory from inorganic compounds, which may 

 further have been synthesised by the chemist from their 

 elements. Does this destroy the distinction between 

 compounds formed by the agency of the organism and 

 those formed by inorganic agencies ? Obviously it 

 does not, for in the green plant the sugar was formed 

 as the result of the vital agency of the living chloro- 

 phyllian cell, while in the laboratory it was built up 

 because of the intelligence of the experimenter. Apart 

 from this intelligence or vital agency, the series of 



