154 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



characteristic forms, and if they are broken they 

 have power to repair themselves. Moreover, it 

 has been shown that crystals show a cycle of 

 growth, and evolve like living tissues. At first they 

 have a cellular-like structure, then they become 

 fibrous, and finally clear and crystalline. More 

 wonderful still, it is found in some instances that 

 crystals will not form in a solution unless a formed 

 crystal be added to the fluid, to act, so to speak, 

 as a parent of the new crystals. 



Not even ferments serve to differentiate the 

 living from the dead. Ferments are extraordinary 

 albuminous substances formed by living bodies 

 which have the power of breaking up compound 

 substances without themselves undergoing any ap- 

 parent change. The ferment amylopsiUy for instance, 

 formed in the sweetbread gland, has the power of 

 breaking up starch, and the ferment pepsin formed 

 in the glands of the stomach has the power of 

 breaking up proteids. Even in this province of 

 ferments, dead matter competes and compares. 



The molecular structure of matter is, as we have 

 said, really very mobile. The same element may 

 appear either in a liquid, or a gaseous, or a solid 

 form ; water may be either steam, or water, or 

 ice, or snow ; carbon may be either a lump of 

 charcoal or a diamond. A metal may assume, 

 among other forms, an anomalous form known as 



