THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



year Mr. Grove published his now well-known work 

 on the c Correlation of the Physical Forces/ and in 

 this, after having spoken of the relations existing 

 between the several physical forces, he said, C I be- 

 lieve that the same principles and mode of reasoning 

 might be applied to the organic, as well as to the 

 inorganic world; and that muscular force, animal 

 and vegetable heat, &c., might, and at some time 

 will, be shown to have similar definite correlations.' 

 This view was taken up by Dr. Carpenter, and was 

 much more fully elaborated by him. In an article 

 contributed to the 'British and Foreign Medico- 

 Chirurgical Review' for January, 1848, Dr. Carpenter 

 maintained c that the vital forces, of various kinds, 

 bear the same relation to the several physical forces 

 of the inorganic world that they bear to each other; 

 the great essential modification or transformation 

 being effected by their passage, so to speak, through 

 the germ of the organic structure, somewhat after the 

 same fashion that heat becomes electricity when passed 

 through certain mixtures of metals.' Then, in 1850, 

 a memoir was read before the Royal Society, and after- 

 wards published in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' 

 entitled, c On the Mutual Relations of the Vital and 

 Physical Forces,' in which the whole doctrine was much 



1845. Though it originally formed part of a paper which afterwards 

 appeared in the 2oth vol. of the ' Transactions of the Linnaean Society, 

 but from which this particular passage was omitted by desire of the 

 officers of the Society. 



