126 ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS IN LIVING MATTER 



and egesta of the living matter, and studying, qualitatively and 

 quantitatively, the energy changes displayed by living matter. 

 As a result of such observations, it is found that the two funda- 

 mental laws of the inorganic world namely, the conservation of 

 matter and the conservation of energy are obeyed throughout 

 the whole range of organised nature. Both these laws can be as 

 well demonstrated by using a living animal, and making a debit 

 and credit account for the matter and energy taken in and given 

 out, as by performing a combustion experiment or causing any 

 other transformation of energy and matter by means of non- vital 

 matter and non- vital energy transformers. We see that this must 

 be so when we consider that living matter is formed from the same 

 material sources as non-living matter, and, further, that both its 

 building up and its sources of energy for all its changes, when built 

 up, arise from non- vital forms of energy; thus the same fundamental 

 laws must apply to it as to the inorganic world, for otherwise no 

 balance could exist between the two domains. 



It by no means follows from this, however, that there is no 

 difference except complexity of structure between living and non- 

 living matter, that there is no form of energy peculiar to living 

 matter, and that if we only knew how to apply to living plants 

 and animals the laws pertaining to the forms of energy found in 

 inorganic nature, we should find nothing superadded, nothing to 

 justify such terms as living or vital. The very existence of such 

 words as " living " and " vital " indicates the primary conception 

 of something essentially different in nature, and it ought to be 

 noted that it is the presence of certain peculiar energy phenomena 

 which gives rise to the necessity for introducing such words, and 

 not complexity of structure or development. We call things 

 living because of the energy changes they exhibit, and not because 

 they are complex chemically or physically. Further, when these 

 peculiar energy phenomena are gone, the objects are dead, and 

 even during life they are more typically living the more markedly 

 they chance to show the distinctive energy phenomena of life. 



The rapid advances of physical chemistry within the past 

 generation have fostered and encouraged in many minds the 

 belief, which every day appears to grow stronger and more popular, 

 that all the phenomena exhibited by living structures are capable 

 of explanation by application of the laws governing non-living 

 matter, that by processes of diffusion and osmosis through peculiarly 



