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TZT^ BEGINNINGS OF LIFE, 



^33 



as well as others^ have been lost sight of by persons who 

 believe that ordinary chemical processes belong to a 

 different category from those which go on during the 

 growth of living things. The difference exists, but it 

 is merely one of degree, as we have previously endea- 

 voured to show 



1 



After having made these general preliminary re- 

 marks, we must now endeavour to ascertain the nature 



building up of like molecules seems explicable as caused by the tendency 

 of the new components which the blood supplies, to acquire movements 

 isochronous with those of the like components of the tissue; which they 

 can do only by uniting into like compound molecules.' (' Principles of 

 Biology/ vol. ii. p. 349.) 



^ Many of the older physiologists, including Johannes Miiller (see 

 'Physiology,* translation by Baly, 1840, p. 4), taught that there was 

 not only an antagonism but a fundamental difference between ordinary 



chemical phenomena and those which go on in living things. The 

 natural tendency which exists for some forms of matter to fall into 

 more and more complex states of combination was not sufficiently 

 considered. Mr. Hinton in his ' Life in Nature * also dwells much upon 

 the supposed radical difference. He constantly speaks of 'vital force' 

 as being ' opposed to chemical force,* instead of being merely the result 

 of another order of chemical affinities. But yet his views concerning 

 ' vital force * were in other respects quite in accordance with those pro- 

 fessed in this work. He says (loc. cit., p. 68) : — We perceive that from 

 our present point of view the vital force exists simply in a peculiar 

 arrangement of elements, involving a tension of a special kind. By 

 whatsoever means this arrangement may be produced, the force thus 

 embodied in it is equally called vital. The characters of the force are 

 due to that arrangement ; they flow from it rather than are concerned 

 in its production ; just as in the case of the other forces, such as heat or 

 electricity, the peculiar properties they manifest are the results and not 

 the causes of the states of matter in which they consist/ Another 

 statement to the same effect is made at p. 155. 



\ 



