PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 67 



are combined into organic matter. I repeat it, I do not for a 

 moment question that the actual force by which these processes are 

 compelled exists in the solar rays, and that it is, after all, the solar 

 energy thus stored up in the vegetable protoplasm and its products 

 that supplies, by its subsequent liberation, all the force manifested 

 by living beings. Yet, let me beg you to observe that in all the 

 myriads of years during which the solar energy has streamed upon 

 the earth, that energy has never, on any occasion that we know of, 

 determined the combination of inorganic atoms into organic matter, 

 except within the substance of already living protoplasm. The 

 water and carbon dioxide and ammonia in the atmosphere and in 

 the soil, come into contact with each other, within the substance of 

 porous inorganic clods on the Surface of the soil, much* as they do 

 in the substance of protoplasm, and the equal sun warms both 

 alike ; but in the clod they remain water, carbon dioxide, and am- 

 monia ; in the protoplasm, provided only that it is living proto- 

 plasm, they combine into starch or oil, or even into protoplasm 

 itself. The essential condition, then, of this storing up of the solar 

 energy for the subsequent use of living beings is the presence of 

 life, and in these fundamental operations the mighty force of the 

 sun acts, in the fullest sense of the words, the part of the servant 

 of life. 



The view thus suggested, that we have here to do with something 

 more than the mere operation of the inorganic forces, is still further 

 strengthened when we come to consider more in detail the phenom- 

 ena of the growth of living beings, whether plants or animals. The 

 better we become acquainted with these phenomena the more fully 

 we become convinced that we have to do with processes for which 

 the inorganic world affords no parallel. 



Linnaeus, indeed, declared, " lapides crescunt," using the very 

 same phrase which he applied also to plants and animals. 40 But it 

 is impossible to maintain this assertion without adopting the most 

 superficial view of the growth of living beings, and defining the 

 process to consist merely in increase of size. That this should have 

 appeared reasonable, in the time of Linnseus, need excite no surprise; 

 but it seems strange to find so astute a thinker as Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer repeating the old fallacy in the first chapter of his Induc- 

 tions of Biology, and declaring : " Crystals grow, and often far 

 more rapidly than living bodies." 41 Then, after instancing the 

 formation of geological strata by the deposit of detritus from water, 



