222 CHANGE OF COMPOSITION IN ALL VITAL ACTS. 



of force, still, however, within the strict condition of 

 equivalence. In all these instances there is no change 

 of composition of the molecules no chemical change. 

 The particles of the wire or bell, or magnet, or Huore- 

 scent body, are merely set in motion, and when the force 

 is withdrawn, they return unchanged to their former 

 state, and will serve the same purpose again- and again 

 according to their inherent inexhaustible properties. 



Quite otherwise is it with the vital acts. No tissue 

 or organ can take on any vital action and cease to 

 manifest it as influenced by any equivalent transforma- 

 tion of force ; muscular contraction, apparently so con- 

 ditioned, is already excepted from vital action. In all 

 vital action force acts merely as a stimulus not at all 

 in equivalence to the result, and that result is deter- 

 mined solely by the pre-existing properties of the 

 organic compound properties not possessed by albu- 

 men, fibrin, protein, or any chemical proximate principle. 

 A change of molecular composition also takes place in 

 every vital act, as above frequently insisted on, and 

 one that is wholly beyond the capacity of any force to 

 cause non-living matter to undergo. So the idea that 

 any possible form or mode of what we know as force 

 compelling albumen to take on the utterly peculiar 

 metabolic changes of the living matter is as impossible 

 as, and more absurd than, the notion of turning lead 

 into gold, by heating, or stamping, or by any force or 

 movement whatever. Even supposing it possible that 

 any peculiar force called vital could animate albumen, 

 the ordinary school who believe albumen to exist in 

 living matter, forget to tell us how this force originates 

 out of ordinary force. But it is needless to dilate on 



