220 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



battle of the Organic with Inorganic, the lat- 

 ter being in its two main forms, which are 

 pursued and assailed and appropriated by the 

 aforementioned two opposite members of the 

 Plant, root and leaf, which show in their many 

 branchings the ceaseless striving to get at 

 their antagonists. 



1. Alimentation.. This in general starts 

 with the Inorganic in its two forms, matter 

 (terrestrial) and energy (solar), and trans- 

 mutes them into the Organic in its earliest 

 form as living protoplasm. It must be con- 

 fessed that this very suggestive process which 

 is really a transition from Unlife to Life is by 

 no means well understood in modern Bot- 

 any. Evidently the two constituents of the 

 inorganic world, cosmical and diacosmical, 

 matter and energy, the static and the dynamic 

 are joined together and made to live through 

 a mediating principle, which usually is said 

 to be chlorophyll, the green substance in the 

 leaf of green plants, and in other parts of the 

 vegetal organism. This life-giving process, 

 as set forth in the recent text-books, bears the 

 very inadequate name of photosynthesis in- 

 adequate, since there must be also a thermo- 

 synthesis, and an electrosynthesis, as well as 

 chemism. Indeed a chemical decomposition 

 takes place, that of carbon dioxide whose oxy- 

 gen is given off into the air, while the carbon 



