BIOLOGY: GENERAL AND 

 MEDICAL. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE COSMICAL RELATIONS OF LIVING 

 MATTER. 



To study the problems of life apart from their cosmical 

 relations is to lose much of their significance. It is only 

 by an appreciation of the endless changes integrations 

 and disintegrations that pervade the universe that one 

 comes to realize that those qualities by which we recog- 

 nize living substance more or less closely correspond to 

 the qualities of all substance, and those forces by which 

 it is animated to those forces by which the universe it- 

 self is controlled. 



All the demonstrations of physics arrive at one conclu- 

 sion: that the universe consists of matter that is inde- 

 structible, controlled by forces that are persistent. 

 Beyond this it is not in the power of the human intellect 

 to penetrate. 



We know nothing and probably never can know any- 

 thing of the origin of matter or force, and are obliged 

 to content ourselves, as our antecedents have done, with 

 the knowledge that both exist, and that we can only 

 recognize the existence of force as it influences matter, 

 and only know matter as it is affected by force. 



The planet upon which we live consists of matter in a 

 highly differentiated state which the chemists are able 

 to resolve into a certain number of forms so stable as not 

 to be susceptible of further analysis, and therefore called 



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