LIFE AND SCIENCE 



obey and serve life. Czapek tells us of the vast 

 number of what are called enzymes, or ferments, 

 that appear in living bodies — "never found in in- 

 organic Nature and not to be gained by chemical 

 synthesis." Orders and suborders of enzymes, they 

 play a part in respiration, in digestion, in assimila- 

 tion. Some act on the fats, some on the carbohy- 

 drates, some produce inversion, others dissolution 

 and precipitation. These enzymes are at once the 

 products and the agents of life. They must exert 

 force, chemical force, or, shall we say, they trans- 

 form chemical force into life force, or, to use Pro- 

 fessor Moore's term, into "biotic energy"? 



in 



The inorganic seems dreaming of the organic. Be- 

 hold its dreams in the fern and tree forms upon the 

 window pane and upon the stone flagging of a winter 

 morning! In the Brunonian movement of matter in 

 solution, in crystallization, in chemical affinity, in 

 polarity, in osmosis, in the growth of flint or chert 

 nodules, in limestone formations — like seeking 

 like — in these and in other activities, inert matter 

 seems dreaming of life. 



The chemists have played upon this tendency in 

 the inorganic to parody or simulate some of the 

 forms of living matter. A noted European chemist, 

 Dr. Leduc, has produced what he calls "osmotic 

 growths," from purely unorganized mineral matter 



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