15i YEAK-BOOK OF FACTS. 



would exist, of course, only as elementary matter or on the first 

 plane ; but united with force, it is thereby raised into the second 

 plane, and continues to exist most naturally there. The third plane 

 is supplied from the second, and the fourth from the third. Thus it 

 is evident that the quantity of matter is greatest on the second, and 

 least on the fourth plane. Thus nature may be likened to a pyramid, 

 of which the mineral kingdom forms the base and the animal kingdom 

 the apex. The absolute necessity of this arrangement on the prin- 

 ciple of the conservation of force may be thus expressed. Matter, 

 force, and energy are related to one another in physical and organic 

 science somewhat in the same manner as matter, velocity, and mo- 

 mentum in mechanics. The whole energy remaining constant, the 

 greater the intensity of the force (the elevation in the scale of exist- 

 ence) the less the quantity of matter. Thus necessarily results what 

 I have called the Pyramid of Nature, upon which organic forces 

 work upwards and physical and chemical forces downwards. 



As the matter of organisms is not created by them, but is only so 

 much matter withdrawn, borrowed, as it were, from the common 

 fund of matter, to be restored at death ; so also organic forces cannot 

 be created by organisms, but must be regarded as so much force ab- 

 stracted from the common fund of force, to be again restored, the 

 whole of it, at death.* If, then, vital force is only transformed 

 physical force, is it not possible, it may be asked, that physical forces 

 may generate organisms dc novo ? Do not the views presented above 

 support the doctrines of "equivocal generation" and of the original 

 creation of species by physical forces 1 I answer that the question 

 of the origination of species is left exactly where it was found and 

 where it must always remain, viz., utterly beyond the limits of 

 human science. But although we can never hope by the light of 

 science to know how organisms originated, still all that we do know 

 of the laws of the organic and inorganic world seem to negative the 

 idea that physical' or chemical forces acting upon inorganic matter 

 can produce them. Vital force is transformed physical force : true, 

 but the necessary medium of this transformation is an organized 

 fabric ; the necessary condition of the existence of vital force is 

 therefore the previous existence of an organism. As the existence 

 of physical forces cannot even be conceived without the previous 

 existence of matter as its neooaiary substratum, so the existence of 

 vital force is inconceivable without the previous existence of an 

 organized structure as its 1 1 DIM WW I w milwliiiliiiii In the words of Dr. 

 Carpenter: "It is the speciality of the material substratum thus fur- 

 nishing the medium or instrument of the metamorphosis which esta- 

 blishes atnl must ever maintain a well-marked boundary '>■ 

 physical and vital f or c e s. Starting with the ahetraol notion of forco 

 as emanating at once from the Divine will, we might say that this 

 force operating through inorganic matter, manifest! itself as electri- 

 city, magnetism, light) heat, chemical affinity, and mechanical 

 motion ; but that when directed through organized structures, it 



• Carpontcr, rhil. Tram., 1150, p. 753. 



