224 



PROP. G. MACLOSKIE^ D.SC.^ LL.D.^ ON 



Francis E. Abbot condemns the application of tlie term 

 machine to the cosmos, suggesting in its place the term 

 organism, Avhich he makes to be a machine and something 

 more, the addition being that internal ends are provided for. 

 We think that when regarded in this light, the term organism 

 equally misses the mark; the physical world includes all 

 organic nature as well as inorganic, and is higher than the 

 highest of organisms, as the Avhole exceeds its greatest part. 

 But here we meet the fact that there is a great deal of 

 mechanical structure in the human as in any other organism, 

 and that the diathesis of the contemporary scientific mind is 

 to ipake us entirely mechanical. Living things dwell on a 

 mechanical earth, are subject to gravitation, heat and cold, 

 contain lime and carbon and much water, and thus have 

 much community with their environment. For a long time 

 it was supposed that the souls of plants and animals lifted 

 them in a semi-miracmlous way above natural laws, that their 

 parts and powers were somehow created by the " vital force " 

 within. Mental phenomena were supposed to have no connec- 

 tion with the body, save that of locality. 



Another class of thinkers were bold enough to turn all the 

 forms and functions of the body into machinery ; to regard 

 our frame as a large hydraulic machine with its accompani- 

 ments. Geometrical figures and algebraic formulae were 

 invented and applied to all organisms ; to explain the parts 

 of flowers, the arrangements of leaves, the forms of shells, 

 the vertebrse of animals, the action of the heart, the afiinities 

 or homologies between distinct species. These speculations, 

 though many of them now seem ridiculous, sustained the 

 interest of students, and fostered research. The discovery of 

 the embryological method of investigation, and of the method 

 of representing heat by its mechanical equivalent, introduced 

 a new order of work both in morphology and physiology. 

 We have found that the plant manufactures food and stores 

 up energy which it has got from the sunshine, a process that 

 is probably mechanical, or at least physical, though it is not 

 yet fully understood. The activities of our body are as 

 completely explained by the food which we consume as is the 

 work of a steam-engine by the coal and water which are its 

 food. It is in this way ascertained that the daily food of an 

 able-bodied man will give as much energy as, if converted 

 into its weight-equivalent, would raise his body about nine 

 miles high ; this energy is used partly to keep up his tem- 

 perature, replacing loss by radiation and evaporation, part of 



