334 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
the case of the shapeless or amorphous anorgana, such as 
non-crystallized stones, deposits, ete. We are consequently 
unable to find any essential difference in the external 
forms or the inner structure of anorgana and organisms. 
Thirdly, let us turn to the forces or the phenomena of 
motion of these two different groups of bodies (Gen. Morph. 
i140). Here we meet with the greatest difficulties. - The 
vital phenomena, known as a rule only in the highly 
developed organisms, in the more perfect animals and plants, 
seem there so mysterious, so wonderful, so peculiar, that 
most persons are decidedly of opinion that in inorganic 
nature there occurs nothing at all similar, or in the least 
degree comparable to them. Organisms are for this very 
reason called animate, and the anorgana, inanimate natural 
bodies. Hence, even so late as the commencement of the 
present century, the science which investigates the 
phenomena of life, namely physiology, retained the 
erroneous idea that the physical and chemical properties 
of matter were not sufficient for explaining these 
phenomena. In our own day, especially during the last 
ten years, this idea may be regarded as having been com- 
pletely refuted. In physiology, at least, it has now no 
place. It now never occurs to a physiologist to consider 
any of the vital phenomena as the result of a mysterious 
vital force, of an active power working for a definite purpose, 
standing outside of matter, and, so to speak, taking only 
the physico-chemical forces into its service. Modern 
physiology has arrived at the strictly monistic conviction 
that all of the vital phenomena, and, above all, the two 
fundamental phenomena of nutrition and propagation are 
purely physico-chemical processes, and directly dependent 
