RESPONSE IN THE LIVING AND NON-LIVING 97 



his wonder knew no bounds ; and he hurried Bose 

 to make a communication to the Royal Society, which 

 he (then Secretary) offered to communicate. Finding 

 that Bose was already invited to give an account of these 

 discoveries as a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal 

 Institution, he said, ' Well, make us a preliminary com- 

 munication immediately, and thus secure your priority, 

 and that of the Society, and then you can give us a demon- 

 stration later on at the meeting next month.' This was 

 done. 



In this Royal Institution discourse (May 10, 1901) 

 Bose marshalled the results he had been obtaining for 

 the last four years and demonstrated each of these by a 

 comprehensive series of experiments. But as these are 

 outlined above, it is enough to quote the peroration : 



I have shown you this evening autographic records of the 

 history of stress and strain in the living and non-living. How 

 similar are the writings ! So similar indeed that you cannot 

 tell one apart from the other. We have watched the responsive 

 pulse wax and wane in the one as in the other. We have 

 seen response sinking under fatigue, becoming exalted under 

 stimulants, and being killed by poisons, in the non-living as in 

 the living. 



Amongst such phenomena, how can we draw a line of 

 demarcation, and say, here the physical ends, and there the 

 physiological begins ? Such absolute barriers do not exist. 



Do not these records tell us of some property of matter 

 common and persistent ? Do they not show us that the 

 responsive processes, seen in life, have been fore-shadowed in 

 non-life ? that the physiological is related to the physico- 

 chemical ? that there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and 

 continuous march of law ? 



If it be so, we shall but turn with renewed courage to the f 

 investigation of mysteries, which have too long eluded us. For 

 every step of science has been made by the inclusion of what 

 seemed contradictory or capricious in a new and harmonious 

 simplicity. Her advances have been always towards a clearer 

 perception of underlying unity in apparent diversity. 



It was when I came upon the mute witness of these self- 



