116 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 



posed case, perhaps, would be made 

 burnable if transformed into water and 

 carbonic acid. We would obtain a cre- 

 ation turned upside down and analo- 

 gous to a world where the bodies we 

 now use as weights would remain un- 

 supported at certain distances from our 

 earth. If we were to use such a body 

 as a weight in a clock, we would have 

 to wind it down instead of up. 



Because organic compounds are 

 products of art, living beings find them- 

 selves obliged to direct the physical 

 forces to destroy these compounds or 

 restore them to their inorganic state 

 more speedily than these forces would 

 have done if left unaided. The proc- 

 esses of decay, performed by micro- 

 organisms, are as necessary in the 

 economy of life as the reverse proc- 

 esses. Otherwise the earth would 

 soon be so covered by corpses that life 

 must cease simply for lack of inorganic 

 raw material. It is true that we might 

 imagine living beings as adapting their 

 organization to this condition and for 



