IN LIVING MATTER 7 



I. The mode of production of living matter is characteristic, 

 and cannot be brought about by the action solely of inorganic 

 forms of energy. Living matter is produced only by the action 

 of other living matter upon the materials and forms of energy 

 of the non-living world. In the process the matter involved is 

 built up into substances of great chemical complexity, and it has 

 been supposed that this is the essential portion of the process of 

 production of a living structure ; but it must be noted that 

 even this very production of complexity of structure from 

 simple inorganic bodies at the expense of the energy of the 

 solar raj^s takes place and can only take place in a living struc- 

 ture itself. 



The very building up of the machine or transformer in which 

 the manifestations of biotic energy are subsequently to take place 

 is then a cogent argument that here we are dealing with a type of 

 energy which is not met with elsewhere. For nowhere else in 

 Nature does a similar process appear to that of the production of 

 living structure, and by no combination or application of the forms 

 of energy apart from life can it be repeated or simulated. 



II. The life cycle of the cell, no less than its birth, or first 

 production, yields a strong argument for the existence within it of 

 a peculiar type of energy. 



It might be argued that it was merely the complex structure 

 of the protoplasm that was required in order that the inorganic 

 forms of energy might be set in play; and that given this 

 structure, osmosis and diffusion and chemical and electrical energy 

 did the rest. But how comes it, then, that a cell perfect in 

 structure does not remain perpetually an engine for the play of 

 such inorganic forces, and why does not life last perpetually in 

 the same cell in a state of equilibrium ? Why does the cell divide 

 and reproduce itself and pass through a cycle, if it is merely a 

 structure for the play of inorganic forms of energy ? No such 

 phenomena of change and reproduction and death are seen any- 

 where in the inorganic world, nor can they be reproduced elsewhere 

 than in living cells. 



If, on the other hand, the living cell possesses, in addition to 

 its peculiar and complex chemical and physical structure, the pro- 

 perty of producing from the inorganic forms of energy a type of 

 energy of its own, some means of accounting for the division and 

 reproduction of the cell become at once apparent, 



