Hartshorne.] [Jan. 19, 
correspondence with the mutability of its forms. Life is then a change, 
a molecular motion ; and it needs a name for itself as distinctly as heat 
motion, electrical, or any other kind of movement. But, is it the direct 
resultant of those other movements? Is organic evolution simply in the 
line or plane of the composition of the cosmic forces, gravitation, heat, 
light, electricity, magnetism, chemism, so as to be the mere outcome of 
these? I would say, no. And this is a very different thing from deny- 
ing the correlation of the vital and physical forces. They are clearly >) 
correlative ; but correlation is not indentity. And the question is a deep 
one, what their exact relation is ; it is now one of the cardinal questions 
in science. Because of the wide variety of its bearings, let us regard 
their most general aspect first. 
Grant, as a postulate, the ‘‘conservation of force.’ Then there follows : 
Ist, as its corollary, that not only is the total of force in the universe: 
never diminished, but, conversely, this totality is never, by physical 
causation, ¢ncreased. As apparent exhaustion of force is only its trans- 
mutation, so apparent increase of it must also be only transmutation of it. 
2d. No change, in the nature or direction of any force, can, in accord- 
ance with the second law of motion, be either uncaused or self-caused, 
that is caused by the force itself. Every such change must have a special, 
sufficient cause. When, then, the laws and tendencies of gravitative, 
electric, magnetic, chemical and heat and light forces are known, and » 
are found to promote, by preference in all instances, the formation of 
compounds of stable equilibrium, by the union of carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorts, etc., we must expect this to be wni- 
formly the result of their direct action, And, therefore, when we find 
conspicuously unstable compounds to be formed of those same elements, 
although in the presence of the same general forces, we ought to conclude 
the formation of such compounds to be the result of another definitely 
acting force. When the force w has been proved always to act in the 
line A B, and the force y to act in the line C D, we must be sure that a 
force acting in the reverse line B A, or D CG, or in any line intermediate 
between B A and DC, cannot be either the force a or the force Yy OF 
a force resulting from the composition of X and Y, but must be another 
force, say z. Assuming the existence of 2, we may then endeavor to ascer- \ 
tain its relations to the other forces; and we may also inquire whether ' 
there may or may not be still other forces of whose composition it is the 
resultant. So we ought to conclude that there is a special force, or mode, 
or line of force, whose action is the assimilation and new construction 
of organizable, protoplasmic, or bioplasmic matter, because the action 
so named involves a movement of elements in direct opposition to that 
produced by the other known forces, as shown especially and invariably 
by the action of those forces upon the same matter, when death occurs. 
I may introduce here a remark upon the chemical part of the discussion 3 
whether, as a matter of induction, all a priort reasoning apart, we are 
warranted in saying that organizable matter is and can be never produced. 
