LIFE. 115 



physical forces, or the chemistry of dead nature — something that 

 ceases to be when life ceases. There is a vital condition, in which 

 molecules have powers that lead to resulting seed-bearing structures, 

 widely different from those of inorganic nature, and standing on alto- 

 gether a higher level. There is a power of evolution, an architectonic 

 power, that not only exalts chemical results, but evolves a diversity of 

 parts and structures, and a heritage of ancestral qualities, of which 

 the laws of material nature give no explanation. 



2. Vegetable and Animal Life. — The vegetable and animal king- 

 doms are the opposite, but mutually dependent, sides or parts of one 

 system of life. The following are some of their distinctive character- 

 istics : — 



(1.) Plants take nutriment into the tissues by absorption, and 

 assimilate it without the aid of a stomach, or any digestive fluid ; ani- 

 mals have a mouth, and receive food into a sac or stomach. Excep- 

 tions to this feature of animal life occur only in the lowest microscopic 

 forms and certain parasitic kinds ; and the most of these extemporize 

 a mouth and stomach whenever any particle of food comes in contact 

 with the outer surface, so that even here the food is digested in an inte- 

 rior cavity. 



(2.) Plants find nutriment in carbonic acid, appropriate the carbon, 

 and excrete oxygen, a gas essential to animal life ; animals use oxygen 

 in respiration, and excrete carbonic acid, a gas essential to vegetable 

 life. 



(3.) Plants take inorganic material as food, and turn it into organic; 

 animals take this organic material thus prepared (plants), or other 

 organic materials made from it (animals), finding no nutriment in inor- 

 ganic matter. 



(4.) The Vegetable kingdom is a provision for the storing away or 

 magazining of force for the Animal kingdom. This force is acquired 

 through the sun's influence or forces acting on the plant, and so pro- 

 moting growth ; mineral matter is thereby carried up to a higher grade 

 of composition, that of starch, gluten, and vegetable fibre, and this is a 

 state of concentrated or accumulated force. To this stored force ani- 

 mals go in order to carry forward their development ; and, moreover, 

 the grade of composition thus rises still higher, to muscle and nerve 

 (which contain much nitrogen in addition to the ordinary constituents 

 of the plant) ; and this is a magazining of force in a still more concen- 

 trated or condensed state. 



(5.) Plants of some minute kinds, and the spores of some larger 

 species (some Algae), have locomotion, or a degree of contractility in 

 certain parts that corresponds to an infinitesimal amount of mechanical 

 power ; but the locomotive spores, as they develop, become fixed, like 



