194 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[August, 1905. 



The Nature of Life. 



Bv Geoffrey Maktin, B.Sc. (Lond.). 



III. — The Possible Significa>.nce of 

 Alcohol Drinking. 



When- a child I lived in a small town in South Wales. 

 In the town the people spoke only linglish; in the 

 remoter country districts the peasants still spoke 

 Welsh. 



The language that these peasants spoke had for me 

 at that time no interest or significance. 



It was a rude, imperfect dialect which was only 

 spoken by uneducated people. 



To me now, in after years, now different appears 

 that rude peasant dialect ! It signifies for me now the 

 relics of a by-gone time when this poor dialect was a 

 great world speech — such as English is now — and these 

 rude peasants the representatives of a mighty people — 

 the Kelts — whose armies swept in waves of living 

 valour from out of Asia into lands so distant as Ireland, 

 Spain, and .Asia Minor. 



Now what has worked the difference in my mental 

 attitude? Solely increase of knowledge. When a 

 child I knew nothing of the Kelts nor of their history. 

 And so it is generally. A treatise on Besscl functions 

 has no earthly interest for a Matabele warrior; the 

 mathematical physicist is deeply interested in such a 

 book; the interest of the mathematician is the result of 

 a knowledge of the use and possibilities of such func- 

 tions. The uninterest of the Matabele is due to his 

 ignorance. 



Many matters appear to possess no interest or im- 

 portance to us simply because of our ignorance. Suit- 

 ably viewed such facts become pregnant with world- 

 wide consequences; for example, the blind hates and 

 bitternesses which exist between peoples of different 

 races has possibly no particular significance for the 

 average man, except perhaps as a deplorable fact. To 

 a scientist these racial hates inspire the greatest 

 interest, for in his eyes they are but the outward play 

 of those mysterious organic forces which cause evolu- 

 tion and the differentiation of species. 



The almost universal drinking of alcohol, and the 

 vice of drunkenness, which exists among all peoples 

 and in all times of which we have any record, is another 

 phenomenon of the same kind. 



We propose here to review this last matter as a 

 scientific problem, and gravely consider the physio- 

 logical reason why men of all animals have this natural 

 instinct after strong drinks most strongly developed. 



Is it the manifestation of some great and imperfectly 

 understood organic tendency, or is it only of the nature 

 of a disease? 



We prorccfl to discuss this question solely from a 

 chemical standpoint. 



One condition which seems indispensable for the 

 manifestation of vital activity is fluidity. All living 

 matter is bathed in fluids and it itself has a mobile 

 semifluid constitution; all facts point to the conclusion 

 that the condition of fluidity is intimately connected 



with life; it is even said that life first originated in the 

 fluid sea and thence spread to land. 



Certainly the observation that by far the greatest 

 part of living matter consists of water, either free or 

 combined, lends strength to this supposition. 



The reason of this mobile and semifluid condition of 

 living matter becomes manifest when we begin to study 

 its chemical nature. Living matter is a complex 

 system of atoms in eternal breakdown. The very con- 

 dition of life seems change. Only in a semifluid 

 condition can take place that continual redistribution 

 of matter which, while preserving the form of living 

 matter intact, supplies that flux of atoms which 

 counterbalances its continuous decomposition. 



Where the external physical conditions as regards 

 temperature and pressure are such as to render the 

 existence of matter in a fluid or semifluid condition 

 impossible, then life as we know it would be incapable 

 of existing. For example, at very low temperatures, 

 all matter solidifies and the fluid condition as a phase 

 becomes impossible. Even the most volatile gases first 

 condense to liquids and then change to solids, so that 

 at a temperature approaching the absolute zero we 

 look out upon a frozen solid world. 



The constitution of living matter must therefore be 

 so adjusted to the external physical conditions as re- 

 gards temperature and pressure that it continually 

 maintains this condition of fluidity. When we contem- 

 plate the history of the world we find that these condi- 

 tions have in former times been widelv different from 

 those which at present hold. There was a time when 

 the world was a white-hot sea, when the moon had 

 not yet been flung off by some mighty catastrophe from 

 the revolving glowing mass. As ages passed the 

 worlJ cooled and cooled, until finally the temperature 

 conditions which now reign were attained. 



But the process of cooling is not finished; the world 

 is still cooling and there will surely come a time when 

 the average temperature of the world will sink from its 

 present value (15" C) to 0° C, to — 10" C, - 100° C, 

 and finally below the freezing point of hydrogen itself. 



Even at the present time the temperature of the 

 world is only slightl}' above that temperature at which 

 all the water on the earth \\ ill pass into the solid con- 

 dition. Indeed the process of solidilicition has already 

 commenced. Vast regions are found where the water 

 has already permanently passed into the solid condi- 

 tion; and the regions will extend with time until the 

 seas and the mighty oceans themselves will freeze and 

 be converted from top to bottom to a vast mass of ice. 



Water will appear to the inli.'iliitants of future days 

 as solid deposits of mineral matter, presenting to them 

 much the same appearance as the white masses of 

 mariile rf)cks in certain parts of the world appear to us. 



At first sight it would appear that the effect this 

 universal solidificilion of w-ater will have upon the life 

 of the earth in the form w'e know it will be its absolute 

 destruction. For with the passage of water into a 

 solid state the existence of living matter in a fluid or 

 semifluid condition becomes impossible. 



Water is f)ne of the most volatile and important 

 constituents of living matter; all the tissues are bathed 

 in watery fluids, and by far the greatest portion of 

 living matter is actually composed out of water. Upon 

 the fluidity of water hangs the mobility and fluidity of 

 living matter as we know it. 



It is true that the freezing point of water may be 

 lowered even to a considerable extent by the addition 

 of impurities to it. For example, a mixture of water 

 and salt can remain fluid at temperatures very much 



