106 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



and in 

 disease. 



Analogy 

 of life to 

 mamet- 



ism. 



convulsive struggles that often accompany death, and 

 which are usually attributed to pain, though this is not by 

 any means invariably true. 



Disease appears sometimes to effect in part the trans- 

 formation of energy which death effects totally. In- 

 flammation is a diseased state, and, as we have seen, in 

 inflamed parts there appears to be an unusually rapid 

 transformation of vital energy into heat. The rise of 

 temperature in tetanus is another case of the same trans- 

 formation, though the manner in which it is effected is 

 probably very different. 



We may compare the charge of static actual energy, 

 which, as I believe, every "living organism contains, to the 

 charge of static actual energy, which, as I think I have 

 shown, constitutes magnetisation. As only some substances, 

 all of which are metallic, are capable of being magnetised,^ 

 so it is only some substances, all of which are highly com- 

 plex compounds of the albuminoid class, that are capable 

 of being vitalized : and as magnetised iron is able to com- 

 municate magnetism to other iron, so vitalized matter is 

 able to vitalize other matter of suitable chemical con- 

 stitution which has become the food of an organism. Thus 

 the laws of magnetism resemble, and as it were prefigure, 

 those of vital energy, as the laws of crystallization re- 

 semble, and as it were prefigure, those of organization. 

 But an organism differs from both a crystal and a magnet 

 in this, that so long as the organism lives it is constantly 

 assimilating, and again parting with, both matter and 

 energy. 

 Summary. The most important conclusions of this chapter may be 

 thus summed up : — 



Organisms assimilate, store, and finally transform and 

 part with, energy as well as matter. The primary function 

 of the nervo-muscular system of animals is to effect the 



1 Faraday has shown that oxygen is magnetic, but I do not think this 

 implies that gaseous oxygen is capable of being magnetised. Magnetisation, 

 as Faraday has shown, implies lines of force in definite directions, such 

 as, I think, can only be due to the molecular tensions of solid bodies. See 

 note to Chapter III. 



