514 PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



that binds the molecules of nitrogen and hydrogen in 

 ammonia, and of carbon and oxygen in carbonic diox- 

 ide. It apparently communicated to these molecules 

 its own method of being, and raised the type of energy 

 from the polar non-vital to the adaptive vital by the 

 process. Thus it transformed the dead inorganic world, 

 perhaps by a process of invasion, as when a fire com- 

 municates itself from burning to not burning combust- 

 ible material. Thus it has been doing ever since, but 

 it has redeposited some of its gathered stores in vari- 

 ous non-vital forms. Some of these are in organic 

 forms, as cellulose ; others are crystals imprisoned in 

 its cells ; while others are amorphous, as waxes, resins, 

 and oils. But consciousness apparently early aban- 

 doned the vegetable line. Doubtless all the energies 

 of vegetable protoplasm soon became automatic. The 

 plants in general, in the persons of their protist ances- 

 tors, soon left a free-swimming life and became sessile. 

 Their lives thus became parasitic, more automatic, 

 and in one sense degenerate. 



11 The animal line may have originated in this wise. 

 Some individual protists, perhaps accidentally, de- 

 voured some of their fellows. The easy nutrition which 

 ensued was probably pleasurable, and once enjoyed 

 was repeated, and soon became a habit. The excess 

 of energy thus saved from the laborious process of 

 making protoplasm was available as the vehicle of con- 

 sciousness and motion. From that day to this, con- 

 sciousness has abandoned few if any members of the 

 animal kingdom. In many of them it has specialized 

 into more or less mind. Organization to subserve its 

 needs has achieved a multifarious development. There 

 is abundant evidence to show that the permanent and 

 the successful forms have ever been those in which 



