95 



energy is "the basic encrgizer of organisms, "and its "foreiunncr 

 and anticipator" was "a redistribution of electric energy," 

 which "tlistinguished chemists" consider "can be traced round 

 each molecule" (p. 8i). Biotic energy is "a more condensed, 

 perfect, and powerful type of the all-pervading energy than even 

 electric" (p. 26). The reviewer does not quite understand how 

 one kind of energy can be more "perfect" than another. This 

 adjective is frequently used throughout the book in comparing 

 various kinds of energy (pp. 80CH-805). What is a "perfect" 

 form of energy? How any of the lower forms of energy are con- 

 verted into biotic energy is not known (p. 102). 



Eight ditYerent kinds of energy are enumerated, viz., thermic, 

 lumic, chemic, and electric, acting in non-living bodies; and 

 biotic, cognitic, cogitic, and spiritic, acting only in living bodies. 

 Biotic energy energizes protoplasm {i. e., cytoplasm); cognitic 

 energy energizes chromatin, it underlies the phenomena of ir- 

 ritability, awareness, response, and sense-perception. Cell 

 division is "due to steady discharges . . . from the center of 

 the nucleus or the nucleolus of cognitic energy," and conjugation 

 "seems to be due to the establishment of unlike or differently 

 charged amounts of cognitic energy," etc. In fertilization the 

 "mutual" attraction of sperm and egg is not due to their mole- 

 cules "as physical entities," but to definite discharges of chemic, 

 electric, biotic, or other energies that transverse the particles," 

 etc. Cogitic energy energizes the substance of the nerve ganglia 

 (Nissl substance, neuratin). It is a "more perfect" (p. 801) 

 form of energy than cognitic, and enables "organisms to form 

 more complex and interlocked impressions of a mental kind'' 

 (p. 801). "There evidently exists a more complex form of 

 energy than the biotic, cognitic, or even cogitic, and which we 

 have termed the spiritic'' (p. 801) ; and there is probably a speci- 

 ally complex substance in "the gray frontal matter of the brain, 

 and which hypothetically we may call spiritin " (p. 804). 



We have given considerable space to this unique conception 

 and terminology because it is the unifying thought running 

 throughout the book, and indicates the angle from which the 

 entire question of evolution is concei\-ed and discussed by the 



