ORGANIC PHYSICS. 



BY CHARLES MORRIS. 



I. The Chemical Evolution of Life. 

 TN regard to the question of the origin and character of organic 

 A energy the whole course of modern science leads steadily to 

 one conclusion. This is, to express it plainly, that the formation 

 of the organic body is a chemical problem, and the source of life 

 force a question in physics. There has been a severe battle 

 fought against this tendency to reduce life to a chemical equation. 

 The adherents of the doctrine of vital energy have entrenched 

 themselves behind many successive lines of defence, and are still 

 fighting, with the bitterness of despair, behind their last barrier, 

 that of protoplasm. Yet science has gone steadily on, breaking 

 down, one by one, the dividing walls between organic and inor- 

 ganic nature. Chemical experiment has shown that many of the 

 organic compounds can be reproduced directly from their ele- 

 ments, by processes identical with or parellel to those which 

 nature employs. Others, not yet reproduced, have been analyzed, 

 and the character and mode of union of their constituents shown. 

 The whole vast array of the lower organic compounds has been 

 brought fairly within the field of chemistry, and laid out in defi- 

 nite formulae. In this respect there no longer exists any organic 

 chemistry. It is simply the chemistry of carbon compounds. 



In like manner physical science has taken hold of the forces of 

 living bodies, and has arrived at a similar conclusion. These 

 forces seem to closely accord in degree witli the energy that 

 should arise from the quantity of oxidized products yielded. 

 Oxidation must set free energy. This energy must manifest itself 

 as some mode of motion. And if the energy really manifested in 

 the body closely agrees with that which must arise from the oxi- 

 dation performed, there is nothing left, in this direction, for vi- 

 tality to do. Chemistry is visibly at work here, too, and vitality 

 is pushed out of the field of view. 



Only one point yet exists upon which any question can be 

 raised, and that is the synthesis of protoplasm, or rather of the 

 molecules of which it is made up. There is no question about its 

 analysis. This is admissibly chemical. Oxygen is constantly at 

 work reducing it to its elements. But this oxidation does not 

 suddenly break it asunder into elementary particles. On the con- 



