COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



as of themselves supplying the explanation of 

 any given order of concrete phenomena, in or- 

 der to realize how far we still remain from our 

 desired goal. If we were to remind a biologist 

 that in every step of his investigations he takes 

 for granted the persistence of force, he would 

 doubtless assent ; but if we were to go on and 

 assert that upon this axiom might be directly 

 reared a science of organic phenomena, he would 

 laugh us to scorn. If we were to assure him 

 that every form of energy manifested by his 

 organisms, from the molar motions of the stom- 

 ach in digestion and the lungs in respiration to 

 the molecular motions of cerebral ganglia, must 

 have preexisted in some other form, he would 

 thoroughly agree with us, but would ask us of 

 what use is all this unless we can trace the course 

 and the results of the transformations. If we 

 were still to insist that all the motions taking 

 place in the aforesaid organisms occur rhyth- 

 mically, along lines of least resistance, and that 

 every such rhythm ends in a more or less con- 

 siderable redistribution of molecular motions, 

 we might still be met by the answer that all this 

 does not give us a science of biology unless we 

 can also point out the general character and di- 

 rection of the changes in which organic rhythms 

 result. 



In other words, our biologist might say to 

 us, with Mr. Spencer, that all these profound 

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