ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS IN LIVING MATTER 131 



expense of the energy of the solar rays takes place and can only 

 take place in a living structure itself. 



The very building up of the machine or transformer in which 

 the manifestations of biotic energy are subsequently to take place 

 is then a cogent argument tha there we are dealing with a type of 

 energy which is not met with elsewhere. For nowhere else in 

 nature does a similar process appear to that of the production of 

 living structure, and by no combination or application of the forms 

 of energy apart from life can it be repeated or simulated. 



II. The life cycle of the cell, no less than its birth or first pro- 

 duction, yields a strong argument for the existence within it of a 

 peculiar type of energy. 



It might be argued that it was merely the complex structure 

 of the protoplasm that was required in order that the inorganic 

 forms of energy might be set in play ; and that given this structure, 

 osmosis and diffusion and chemical and electrical energy did the 

 rest. But how comes it, then, that a cell perfect in structure does 

 not remain perpetually an engine for the play of such inorganic 

 forces, and why does not life last perpetually in the same cell in a 

 state of equilibrium ? Why does the cell divide and reproduce 

 itself and pass through a cycle, if it is merely a structure for the play 

 of inorganic forms of energy ? No such phenomena of change and 

 reproduction and death are seen anywhere in the inorganic world, 

 nor can they be reproduced elsewhere than in living cells. 



If, on the other hand, the living cell possesses, in addition to 

 its peculiar and complex chemical and physical structure, the pro- 

 perty of producing from the inorganic forms of energy a type of 

 energy of its own, some means of accounting for the division and 

 reproduction of the cell become at once apparent. 



Nearly all, if not all, other known forms of energy are phasic 

 or cyclic in character, and it is certain that biotic energy is cyclic 

 also, as has been proven in previous chapters, the conditions of 

 the cycle differs in different types of cell, and under different con- 

 ditions of environment, and at certain stages alternations must 

 occur as the result of variation in the biotic energy of the cell. 



In other forms of energy we recognise what has been termed 

 the potential factor. Now, if we suppose that in the living cell 

 there is produced a type of energy peculiar to living structures, 

 from the non-living forms of energy supplied from without by 

 means of the cell acting as transformer, then it may be supposed 



