518 FORCE OF BINARY COMBINATIONS. 



whether the affinities of life be owing to the 

 same physical cause which governs those of in- 

 organic matter or not, the former evince at once 

 a far more complex and refined mode of opera- 

 tion. Hence the beautiful remark of Kielmyer, 

 as cited by Tiedemann, that crystallization re- 

 presents in some degree the simple elements of 

 geometry ; while in the production of organized 

 bodies, nature has employed a high geometry.* 



Owing to the more complex affinities by 

 which the elements of organized bodies are 

 joined together, they have a greater tendency to 

 undergo what has been called spontaneous de- 

 composition, than the binary combinations of 

 inorganic matter. And it would seem to be a 

 general law of nature, that the force with which 

 bodies cohere together, is inversely as the number 

 , of elements and atoms of which they are composed. 

 For example, water is more difficult to decom- 

 pose than the deutoxide of hydrogen ; carburetted 

 hydrogen, than bicarburetted hydrogen ; and 

 the latter than aetherine. In like manner, the 

 protoxide of nitrogen is more difficult to resolve 



* It may here be observed that saccharine bodies, including 

 gum, starch, lignin, tannin, &c., are formed by the union of 

 oxygen and hydrogen in the proportions that form water, with 

 carbon ; that the same elements with oxygen in excess form 

 acids; while with hydrogen in excess, with respect to oxygen, 

 they afford oily and resinous compounds. Yet there is a large 

 class of acids that contain no oxygen, such as the hydrocyanic^ 

 the hydrochloric, &c. 



