A THEORY OF LIFE 169 



quarrel with the statement that energy is first seen 

 in the sun, in the earth, in the air, and in the 

 water ; that " with life something new appears 

 in the universe, namely, a union of the internal 

 and external adjustment of energy which we 

 appropriately call an Organism." That " the 

 germ is an energy complex " is no doubt an 

 unproved hypothesis, as he admits, but is quite 

 likely. With all these assertions we may agree, 

 though we cannot with that which follows, namely, 

 that energy is creative, for that such is impossible 

 in any true sense of that word we have already 

 tried to show. 



We have now to ask ourselves in what way this 

 energy conception of life differs from, or goes 

 beyond, the two theories of life mechanistic 

 and vitalistic, which have hitherto been supposed 

 to have exhausted the possibilities of explanation. 

 In order to do this we must analyse the author's 

 idea of energy and its relationship to biological 

 processes a little more closely. He begins his 

 study of life and its evolution by considering 

 how nutrition and the derivation of energy can 

 have taken place before chlorophyl had come 

 into existence ; and he very pertinently points 

 to the prototropbic bacteria as probably repre- 

 senting " the survival of a primordial stage of life 

 chemistry." Thus a " primitive feeder," the 

 bacterium Nitrosomonas, " for combustion . . . 

 takes in oxygen directly through the intermediate 

 action of iron, phosphorus or manganese, each of 

 the single cells being a powerful little chemical 

 laboratory which contains oxidising catalysers, 



