432 Notes on Organic Chemistry. 



organization ; but whenever the organization with which it is 

 connected either builds up, or takes to pieces, a chemical com- 

 pound, we have good reason for believing that it does so in a 

 manner analogous to that which a chemist can employ. Already 

 the chemist can make a great many of the peculiar substances 

 found in living beings; but if he could make them all, he 

 would not therefore be able to produce living beings. He 

 would simply have imitated certain processes which such beings 

 perform, and as in the legend of Prometheus, the fire from 

 heaven would still be wanted to complete his work. The 

 mystery of life is beyond the reach of physical science ; but no 

 sound thinker ascribes to life — that is, to an unknown and mys- 

 terious principle — actions that belong to the physical world. 

 So far as a living organism is a chemist, it acts like other 

 chemists ; so far as it is a mechanic, it acts like other me- 

 chanics ; and all processes that are obviously chemical or 

 mechanical will be explainable according to the laws of science, 

 whether they take place in organic structures, or in the labora- 

 tory or workshop of man. Natural laws maintain their own 

 course without conflict and without real antagonism. In the 

 highest living being, that which is chemical is as much so 

 as in the earth on which they tread. Qualities and properties 

 beyond chemistry they may possess in abundance, but all the 

 chemical work they do or suffer proceeds exactly in the way 

 which chemical laws prescribe, and without interference from 

 any higher laws which other portions of their nature may 

 obey. When Leonidas defended his country at Thermopylaa, 

 when Socrates emptied the hemlock draught, the divine 

 element in human nature did not change the character of phy- 

 sical processes, and the brain which was animated with their 

 thoughts suffered certain particles of phosphorus to be oxydized, 

 just as might have taken place in a chemist's spoon. 



These views have been growing in the most advanced 

 minds for a long time. They were perceived by those who 

 took the grandest views of nature's operations, and traced in 

 all an intellectual unity corresponding with the highest con- 

 ceptions man can form of the one Ultimate Source of everything 

 that exists. But those who looked only to chemistry, as it 

 existed a few years ago, thought otherwise, and M. Berthelot 

 cites a passage from so distinguished a man as Gerhardt to 

 the effect that ( ' the formation of organic matter depends on 

 the mysterious action of vital force, an action opposed and in 

 constant strife with what we regard as the causes of ordinary 

 chemical action." He added that what the chemist did was 

 opposed to vital action ; " he burnt, he destroyed, he worked 

 by analysis; while vital force operated by synthesis, and recon- 

 structed the edifice which chemical force pulled down." 



