9/8 Organic Compounds in their Relations to Life. [December, 



It is, however, difficult to describe the properties of the plasson 

 bodies without giving rise to the idea of life, since the leading one 

 is that of spontaneous mobility, or motility, as it has been technic- 

 ally called. Anything that moves is naturally supposed to be 

 alive, and if this were a test of life, all forms of protoplasm would 

 be living things. And, indeed, there would be really no objection 

 to this view, provided the idea of life could be rigidly confined to 

 this and a few other simple phenomena. But the tendency is 

 always strong to couple with the notion of life that of organization, 

 and k\v can be brought to recognize either that life can be the 

 product of chemical organization, or that it can precede morpho- 

 logical organization. We are apt to associate with the concep- 

 tion of life, that of nerves, muscles, joints, limbs, stomach, and even 

 sense organs. From the plasson bodies all these are as com- 

 pletely wanting as from a lump of gypsum. The spontaneous 

 movements and all the transformations through which these sub- 

 stances pass, only constitute the mode in which their chemical 

 activities manifest themselves. These activities belong to them in 

 the same sense that sweetness belongs to sugar or astringency to 

 alum. In fact, the primary distinction between these most com- 

 plex of all known bodies, and the less complex ones seems to be, 

 that while in the latter all their activities are molecular, in the 

 former they are to a certain extent molar, and carry with them the 

 whole or a portion of the substances themselves. 



The plasson bodies have recently been made to constitute a 

 special field of scientific research, and as much by accident as 

 otherwise, it has been occupied by the biologists instead of by the 

 chemists. These, like judges on the bench, have constantly ruled 

 in favor of their own jurisdiction, and it is in this way that these 

 substances have come to be regarded as forms of life, although 

 their biographers have from the first insisted that they are not or- 

 ganized beings. Perhaps this bit of history is not unfortunate, 

 since it teaches us to disconnect the ideas of life and organization 

 in the biological sense, and thereby directs our thoughts towards 

 the most profound truth, both of biology and of chemistry, which 

 is that life is the result of the aggregation of matter. A plasson 

 body performs all the essential functions of a living organism. It 

 is capable of motion, nutrition an4 propagation. To these Pro- 

 fessor Haeckel adds sensation, for how can the other functions be 

 conceived. of without the aid of this one ? But we might almost 



