315 
1872.] [ Hartshorne. 
sunlight into potential energy within it. The fallen weight is thus raised 
and energy is thus stored up.”’ 
As Dr. Barker adds, the force which is stored up is undeniably physical ; 
but I remark further, that the process by which it is stored is of another 
order, and involves a different kind of physical force movement from that 
by which it is evolved and expended. ‘ 
What more can be made out about this mysterious force of life? Not 
mtich as yet; but enough, perhaps, to give encouragement to inves- 
tigation. Reduced to its simplest element, namely, the cell, or the physi- 
ological unit, life is a process of tneretion and excretion. What goes in as 
food is made into tissue, and (after functioning) comes out as waste. 
The functioning is secondary to it as /ife, though no doubt in itself pri- 
mary under the view of purpose. The organic cell converts crystalloid 
atoms or molecules into colloid molecules. Now what is the difference ? 
not merely in the fact of different degrees of diffusibility, but in the state 
of the particles ; the reason why they are colloidal? May we not con- 
jecture, that it may be owing to a differentiated movement of the atoms ? 
Clausius and others have long since given reason for supposing that the 
particles of all gases are in incessant motion among themselves. May not 
these atomic movements of the three gases, nitrogen, hydrogen and 
oxygen, all of which are associated with carbon in bioplasm, be in some 
manner retained in the integration of the organic cell? 
Life-motion is probably not wndulatory, like light, heat and electrical 
movement, but rotary or cycloidal. For an analogy, I would allude, 
somewhat too boldly, to the theory of some astronomers, of the present 
constitution of Saturn’s rings ; of multitudinous small masses incessantly 
in motion among themselves. And the occasion for brevity in this com- 
munication must be the excuse for crowding, before I conclude, yet other 
questionable proposals of analogy ; as of the minute microscopic cell, with 
its inward, and outward currents through undiscoverable pores, with even 
the incretions and excretions of the sun and its photosphere ; whose out- 
ward and inward cloud-currents are now being so laboriously studied. 
Somewhat less remote, certainly, is the suggestion of analogy (not iden- 
tity) of life-actions with effects of some of the other forces of physical 
nature. I would regard sexual union which (except in mere dividuation, 
such as the life of a tree in its cuttings, or the fissiparous generation of 
animals) is, until heterogeny or spontaneous generation be proved, the 
only method of the indefinite continuation of life,—I would regard this 
Sexual union as the true analogue of chemical union. The importance 
of bi-sexual polarity in organic nature has hardly yet been fully appre- 
ciated. Carbon and oxygen uniting give out heat, and carbonic acid 
which escapes. Organisms of two sexes, say the pollen cells and germ cells 
of a plant combine, and evolve life-force, whose products do not escape, 
but remain as organizable and organized protoplasmic matter ; develop- 
ing new cells in connection with each other. Yet another analogy with 
physical force-action may be presented. It is known that phyllotaxis, or 
