1 882.] Organic Compounds in their Relations to Life. 969 



than can be artificially produced, and hence too stable to be arti- 

 ficially dissociated. 



"2. Inorganic Compounds. — Substances whose molecules are 

 composed of those of chemical elements or of other inorganic 

 compounds of lower degrees of aggregation : formed in the later 

 stages of the development of planets at high but artificially pro- 

 ducible temperatures, and therefore capable- of artificial decom- 

 position ; and constituting the greater part of the solid crust of 

 cooled-off bodies, their liquid, and a portion of their gaseous en- 



"3. Organic Compounds.— Substances whose highly complex 

 and very unstable molecules are composed of those of chemical 

 elements, inorganic compounds, or organic compounds of lower 

 organization : formed on the cooled surfaces of fully developed 

 planets at life-supporting temperatures." 



In that paper I endeavored to show that the so-called chemical 

 elements differ from one another in ways which strongly suggest 

 the possibility that some of them may have been evolved from 



compounds are formed. These latter were therefore treated as 

 simply forming the continuation of a uniform process of evolu- 

 tion, varied in its character only by the conditions of temperature 

 affecting the globe at the period when these substances were res- 

 pectively formed upon it. The passage above quoted from the same 

 paper shows also that the development of the organic compounds 

 was looked upon as the still further prolongation of this uniform 

 law operating under the greatly lowered temperatures prevailing 

 on the surface of the earth's crust after its formation. This law 

 was further shown to be none other than that which is known to 

 prevail in each of the higher domains of phenomena, in the min- 

 eral, the vegetable, and the animal world— the production oi 

 aggregates of higher orders of complexity through the re-com- 

 pounding of units of lower degrees of simplicity. As indices of 

 this law, and facts of primary significance, it was shown that 

 throughout the scale, so far as traceable, even in the domain of 

 the chemical elements, the molecules constituting each progres- 



by decrease of stability. 



The present paper will aim to take the subject up where the 

 former left it, and to confine itself exclusively to an examination 



