246 Dr. T, Sterry Hunt on the 



in the mineral kingdom give rise to the crystalline individual 

 are therein in static equilibrium. The organic individual, on 

 the contrary, is kinetic, and maintains its equilibrium only by 

 perpetual adjustment with the outer world. 



§ 22. General physic, or the study of nature, presents itself 

 under a twofold aspect, the historical and the philosophical ; 

 the former gives rise to physiography, while to the latter 

 the name of physiology more properly belongs. Physio- 

 graphy describes specific and individual forms and their ex- 

 ternal relations; while physiology investigates the processes 

 by which these forms are produced, and gives us the logic of 

 nature. The physiology of matter in the abstract is dyna- 

 mic; that of mineral forms is both dynamic and chemic ; 

 while that of organic forms is at once dynamic, chemic, and 

 biotic. 



Nature in all its manifestations constitutes a unity; and it 

 is the object of general physiology to study the process of crea- 

 tion in the material world from primal matter upward through 

 its various forms until it attains to organization, and at length, 

 in man, to self-consciousness, where the domain of physiology 

 ends and that of psychology begins. 



§ 23. In accordance with the views here enunciated, all 

 matter is in a sense living, " all movement is radically vital "*, 

 though we, in common language, refuse the designation of 

 vital to those lower forms of material activity which appear 

 in dynamic and chemic phenomena, reserving it for such as 

 are supposed to be peculiar to organized forms, which, to pre- 

 vent misconception, I have called biotic. When matter, 

 through chemism, attains the condition of protoplasm, Avhich 

 may be chemically described as a colloidal albuminoid united 

 with more or less water, it begins to exhibit that form of 

 activity which we term vital or biotic. " The mobility and 

 the spontaneous movements of this substance," says Allman, 

 " result from its proper irritability. From the facts, there is 

 but one legitimate conclusion, that life is a property of proto- 

 plasm " f . 



§ 24. Many of the peculiar characters of protoplasmic 

 matter appear to be common to chemical species in the col- 

 loidal condition. The remarkable properties exhibited by 

 colloids led their discoverer, Grraham, twenty years since, to 

 declare, " The colloidal is, in fact, a dynamical [kinetic] state 

 of matter, the crystalloidal being the statical condition. The 

 colloid possesses Energia : it may be looked upon as the pro- 



* Stallo, < Philosophy of Nature/ p. 66. 



t Allman, Presidential Address before the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, in 1879, 



