NUCLEUS AS SOURCE OF ENERGY 155 



perties. So that its substance would be in a state of 

 perpetual change. It may be that such a substance 

 as we have been led to postulate, is a polymeric 

 form of carbon, just as Verworn postulates biogenes 

 or units of life, and that in following the line 

 of reasoning here suggested we should be led to 

 regard such units rather as vital elements than com- 

 pounds. For we see that it is most probable that 

 the energy which may at first sight appear to be 

 ultra-materialistic is in fact stored up in the sether 

 as internal atomic energy. Life activity and 

 radio-activity should admit of continuity. We may 

 venture to call such vital units bio-elements, being 

 regarded as active and unstable polymeric forms of 

 carbon, just as radium is probably a polymeric form 

 of barium ; polymeric, however, in its newest and 

 most recently accepted sense, as being similar in its 

 ultimate electronic constitution and occupying a 

 similar place in the periodic law. 



The reasons which lead us to adopt this view are 

 based of course on analogy. The part played by 

 carbon in vital processes is the most remarkable fact 

 in connection with the phenomena of life. The fact 

 that artificial cells can be synthesised and that they 

 can behave, though remotely, as if they were alive 

 leads us to suppose that by a process of extrapolation 

 we should reach the elements which in turn should 

 give rise to the analogous or vastly more complicated 

 phenomena of life itself 



In this way the problem of the origin of life be- 

 comes in part at least entwined with the problem of 



