PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 33T 



of law : but scientific investigation establishes the fact that no 

 phenomenon is the result of accident, or even of fitful volition. 

 The modern science of statistics has revealed a permanency and 

 an order in the occurrence of events depending on conditions 

 in which nothing of this kind could have been supposed. Even 

 those occurrences which seem to be left to the free will, the pas- 

 sion, or the greater or less intelligence of men, are under the 

 control of laws — fixed, immutable, and eternal." And after 

 dwelling on the developments and significance of moral statistics, 

 he adds: "The astonishing facts of this class lead us inevitably 

 to the conclusion that all events are governed by a Supreme In- 

 telligence who knows no change ; and that under the same con- 

 ditions, the same results are invariably produced."* 



Organic Dynamics. — The contemplation of these uniformities 

 leads naturally to the great modern generalization of the correla- 

 tion of all the working energies of nature : and this to the subject 

 of organic dynamics. "Modern science has established by a wide 

 and careful induction, the fact that plants and animals consist 

 principally of solidified air ; the onlj portions of an earthy cha- 

 racter which enter into their composition, being the ashes that 

 remain after combustion." Some ten years before this, or in 

 1844, (as already noticed in an earlier part of this memoir) 

 Henry had very clearly indicated the correlation between the 

 forces exhibited by inorganic and organic bodies : arguing that 

 from the chemical researches of Liebig, Dumas, and Boussin- 

 gault, " it would appear to follow that animal power is referable 

 to the same sources as that from the combustion of fuel :"t 

 probably the earliest explicit announcement of the now accepted 

 view, In the series of agricultural essays above referred to, 

 he endeavored to frame more definitely a chemico-physical 

 theory by which the elevation of matter to an organic combina- 

 tion in a higher state of power than its source, might be ac- 

 counted for. Regarding "vitality" not as a mechanical force, 

 but as an inscrutable directing principle resident in the minute 

 germ — supposed to be vegetative, and enclosed in a sac of 

 starch or other organic nutriment, he considered the case of 

 such provisioned germ (a bean or a potato) embedded in the 

 soil, supplied with a suitable amount of warmth and moisture 



* Agricultural Report Com. Pat. for 1855, p. 357. 



t Proceed. Am. Phil. Sac. Dec. 1844, vol. iv. p. 129. The admirable 

 treatise of Dr. Julius R. Mayer of Heilbronn, on " Organic Movement in 

 its relation to material changes," in which for the first time he main- 

 tained the thesis that all the energies developed by animal or vegetable 

 organisms, result from internal changes having their dynamic source in 

 external forces, was published the following year, or in 1845. Rumford 

 nearly half a century earlier, had a partial grasp of the same truth. 

 {Phil. Trans. R. S. Jan. 25, 1798, vol. Ixxxviii. pp. 80-102.) 



Ill 



