514 



PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



that binds the molecules of nitrogen and hydrogen in 

 ammonia, and of carbon and oxygen in carbonic diox- 

 ide. It apparently communicated to these molecules 

 its own method of being, and raised the type of energy 

 from the polar non-vital to the adaptive vital by the 

 process. Thus it transformed the dead inorganic world, 

 perhaps by a process of invasion, as when a fire com- 

 municates itself from burning to not burning combust- 

 ible material. Thus it has been doing ever since, but 

 it has redeposited some of its gathered stores in vari- 

 ous non-vital forms. Some of these are in organic 

 forms, as cellulose ; others are crystals imprisoned in 

 its cells ; while others are amorphous, as waxes, resins, 

 and oils. But consciousness apparently early aban- 

 doned the vegetable line. Doubtless all the energies 

 of vegetable protoplasm soon became automatic. The 

 plants in general, in the persons of their protist ances- 

 tors, soon left a free-swimming life and became sessile. 

 Their lives thus became parasitic, more automatic, 

 and in one sense degenerate. 



" The animal line may have originated in this wise. 

 Some individual protists, perhaps accidentally, de-; 

 voured some of their fellows. The easy nutrition which 

 ensued was probably pleasurable, and once enjoyed 

 was repeated, and soon became a habit. The excess 

 of energy thus saved from the laborious process of 

 making protoplasm was available as the vehicle of con- 

 sciousness and motion. From that day to this, con- 

 sciousness has abandoned few if any members of the 

 animal kingdom. In many of them it has specialized 

 into more or less mind. Organization to subserve its 

 needs has achieved a multifarious development. There 

 is abundant evidence to show that the permanent and 

 the successful forms have ever been those in which 



