1884.] On Catagenesis. : 977. 
forces are put by the animal organism, the evident design in the 
occasion of their production, that gives them the stamp of organic 
life. We recognize the specific utility of the secretions of the 
glands, the appropriate distribution of the products of digestion, 
and adaptation of muscular motion to many uses. The increase 
of heat to protect against depression of temperature; the light to 
direct the sexes to each other; the electricity as a defence against 
enemies; display unmistakably the same utility. We must not 
only believe that these functions of animals were originally used 
y them, under stimulus, for their benefit, but if life preceded 
organism, that the molar mechanism which does the work, has 
developed as the result of the animal’s exertions under stimuli. 
This will especially apply to the mechanism for the production of 
motion and sound. Heat, light, chemism and electricity doubt- 
less result from molecular aptitudes inherent in the constitution 
of protoplasm. But the first and last production of even these 
phenomena is dependent on the motions of the animal in obtain- 
ing and assimilating nutrition. For without nutrition all energy 
Would speedily cease. Now the motion required for the obtain- 
ing of nutrition has its origin in the sensation of hunger. So 
even for the first steps necessary to the production of inorganic 
forces in animals, we are brought back to a primitive con- 
Sciousness, 
To regard consciousness as the primitive condition of energy, 
contemplates an order of evolution in large degree the reverse of 
the one which is ordinarily entertained. The usual view is, that 
ife is a derivative from inorganic energies as a result of high or 
complex molecular organization, and that consciousness (=sen- 
sibility) is the ultimate outcome of the nervous or equivalent 
energy possessed by living bodies. The failure of the attempts 
to demonstrate spontaneous generation, will prove, if continued, 
fatal to this theory. Nevertheless the order cannot be absolutely 
reversed. Such a proceeding is negatived by the facts of the 
necessary dependence of the animal kingdom on the vegetable, 
and the vegetable on the inorganic for nutrition, and consequently 
existence. So the animal organism could not have existed 
Prior to the vegetable, nor the vegetable prior to the mineral. 
The explanation is found in the wide application of the “ doctrine 
the unspecialized,” so clearly demonstrated by palzontology. 
__' The term specialized, introduced into biology by Professor Dana, has been used 
connection with energy in creation by the author, Penn Monthly, 1875, p. 569. 
