240 Ohio State Academy of Science 



Since Woehler, the distinction between organic and inorganic 

 matter has become merely schematic ; but the Hne drawn at life 

 has resisted obhteration 



It is true that my friend, Professor Herrera has said: 



"I conceive the human organism as a machine containing 

 some five or six htres of blood employed in appropriating to 

 itself the nutritious principles of food, absorbing oxygen, and 

 carrying it to the nerve to make it vibrate by discharges of 

 carbon-dioxide. 



"Life is now to be defined as the result of the physico- 

 chemical action of protoplasmic currents, the cause of such 

 currents being diffusion, heat, and some other secondary 

 factors." 



But until someone sees such currents set up in some way 

 differing from the natural transmission of pre-existent life, a 

 thing which no one at present even hopes for, the old boundary 

 remains undisturbed. 



If any benefit is obtainable from a physico-chemical nomen- 

 clature and notation, science will not object to their use. 



Suppose, then, we put it in the boldest form, that biolog}^ 

 is now engaged in the creation of an available reprezentation of 

 the activities and laws of activity of these wonderful protoplasmic 

 currents. 



The definition then would be something like this: Biology 

 is the science created to give understanding and mastery of the 

 protoplasmic activities on this earth ; to make easy the explana- 

 tion and description of such activities and the transmission of 

 this mastery. 



The association, the suggestion is immediate: 



Beyond the microtome, the microscope, the statistics of 

 observation, of experiment, of what instrument of world-con- 

 quest must the new science avail herself? The answer is patent; 

 of mathematics, that giant pincers of scientific logic which 

 showed Newton the moon as simply a bigger apple trying to fall 

 straight down on his head, flashed out in the mind of Adams the 

 unseen planet Neptune, told Rayleigh that the chemists had 

 always been breathing vast quantities of argon without knowing 

 it, pointed to Mendeljeeff the places of unknown chemical ele- 

 ments, and through Helmholtz and his pupil Hertz has given us 

 the Lenard rays, the Roentgen rays, radium itself, and wireless 

 telegraphy based on Hertzian waves. 



In mathematics, the part which is being recognized as pure 

 deductive logic is ever greater. The residuum takes from 

 biological advance itself new form and new statement. 



