18 BIOTIC STRUCTURE AND BIOTIC ENERGY 



matter of any given organism cannot pass into another in the long 

 chain of metamorphoses occurring in development, without the 

 accompaniment of energy changes and the energy content of the 

 system or organism varying. The changes in the matter and 

 the changes in the energy are most highly specific for living matter ; 

 nothing quite similar or identical either in structure or energy 

 properties to a living cell is seen elsewhere in nature. Some term is 

 requisite to express this, and if we are justified in speaking of living 

 matter or biotic matter we are equally justified in speaking of living 

 energy or biotic energy. 



The living matter is composed of well-known chemical elements 

 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. but these are built up 

 in matter possessing life, into aggregates which have other additional 

 properties than inorganic matter (using this term to include the 

 carbon compounds not possessed of living structure). These aggre- 

 gates, by virtue of their structure and arrangement and of the 

 energy properties accompanying that structure, have come to be alive 

 that is, to demonstrate energy phenomena such, for example, as 

 cell division not seen anywhere except in living structures; the 

 energy inhabiting the structures can be transformed to and fro 

 into other types of energy, obeying the thermo- dynamic laws in 

 the process, just as in the case of any other form of energy, and 

 giving it the name biotic means simply that it is a type of energy 

 sui generis, as are each of the inorganic types, and that it is typically 

 seen in living cells. ^Jp 



There is no hiatus between biotic energy and other energy 

 types, and if a sufficiently complex colloidal aggregation could be 

 experimentally constructed, it would be possible to set it in this 

 peculiar slow phasic vibration, and so simulate a lowly form of 

 life. The hysteresis of gelatine solutions previously referred to 

 is probably a first commencement of this labile metastable 

 equilibrium, but far below any sign of life such as characterises 

 the living cell. 



Also, many cell products such as enzymes, toxins, and such bodies 

 appear to possess properties intermediate between dead colloids 

 and living cells, and carry outside the cell certain properties be- 

 longing to living matter. 



Enzymes and similar bodies also act intracellularly, and it has 

 even been supposed that practically all the work of the cell is done 

 by proper combination in due concentration of a host of enzymes. 



