436 Notes on Organic Chemistry. 



men, fibrine, osseine, etc., winch play so important a part in 

 anatomy and physiology," may probably be considered as 

 amides, though, he adds, their analysis is yet too imperfect to 

 indicate how their synthesis may be effected.* 



These considerations will enable ns to appreciate an or- 

 ganism, however simple, as a laboratory in which divers 

 substances are brought into contact and' juxtaposition, and 

 thus give rise to new compounds, which meet each other in 

 their nascent state, and, by mutual action, cause the forma- 

 tion of other compounds still more complicated. An organism 

 is always something more, and often very much more, than a 

 laboratory, but it is that amongst other things, and in it, as in 

 a laboratory, chemical actions of composition, decomposition, 

 and recomposition occur. 



"We desire in this article only to present a few elementary 

 considerations not difficult, with due attention, to be understood, 

 and to indicate the very wide and important philosophical con- 

 ceptions that arise therefrom. Under the microscope many 

 organic changes of growth and decay may be traced. Every- 

 thing that lives in an animal or vegetable form is changing the 

 matter around it, and being changed in its turn. It lives so long- 

 as the sum of such changes build up and preserve its charac- 

 teristic structure, and, when it perishes under natural condi- 

 tions, other forms of life determine the way in which it is 

 taken to pieces, and enjoy their being as a conseqiTence of its 

 decay. They moreover prepare the way for a still further and 

 wonderful cycle of life-changes, all tending to a consumma- 

 tion beyond mortal ken. 



That which is most wonderful in the proceedings of living 

 beings, considered merely as material objects, is the power 

 which they possess of providing all the circumstances neces- 

 sary for the complicated actions we have described, and of 

 causing each action to take place exactly at the right time, and 

 with precisely the right force. Here we see that a Presiding 

 Intelligence directs the functions of life. 



* An analysis which reduces a compound organic body into its ultimate ele- 

 ments suggests no systematic method for its reconstruction ; but such method 

 may be suggested by an analysis -winch resolves a compound into simpler forms. 



