242 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. IV., No. 84. 



sion by animals of dead into living protoplasm; 

 second, the conversion of inorganic substances into 

 protoplasm by plants; and, third, the manufacture of 

 the so-called organic compounds from the inorganic 

 by plants. It is also well known that living animal 

 organisms act as producers, by conversion, of vari- 

 ous kinds of inorganic energy, as heat, light, motion, 

 etc. It is the uses to which these forces are put by 

 the animal organism, that give them the stamp of 

 organic life. We recognize the specific utility of the 

 secretions of the glands, the adaptation of muscular 

 motion to many uses. The increase of heat to 

 protect against depression of temperature, and the 

 electricity as a defence against enemies, display 

 unmistakably the same utility. We must not only 

 believe that these functions of animals were origi- 

 nally used by them, under stimulus, for their benefit, 

 but, if life preceded organism, that the molar mech- 

 anism 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 pro- 

 duction of motion and sound. Heat, light, chem- 

 ism, and electricity doubtless result from molecular 

 aptitudes inherent in the constitution of protoplasm. 

 But the first and last production of even these phe- 

 nomena is dependent on the motions of the animal 

 in obtaining and assimilating nutrition; for without 

 nutrition all energy would speedily cease. Now, the 

 motion required for the obtaining of nutrition has 

 its origin in the sensation of hunger. So, even for 

 the first steps necessary to the production of inor- 

 ganic forces in animals, we are brought back to a 

 primitive consciousness. 



To regard consciousness as the primitive condition 

 of energy, contemplates an order of evolution in 

 large degree the reverse of the one which is ordina- 

 rily entertained. The usual view is, that life is a 

 derivative from inorganic energies, as a result of high 

 or complex molecular organization, and that con- 

 sciousness (= sensibility) is the ultimate outcome 

 of the nervous or equivalent energy possessed by 

 living bodies. The failure of the attempts to demon- 

 strate spontaneous generation will prove, if contin- 

 ued, 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 conse- 

 quently for existence. So the animal organism could 

 not have existed prior to the vegetable, nor the vege- 

 table prior to the mineral. The explanation is found 

 in the wide application of the ' doctrine of the un- 

 specialized.' From this point of view, creation con- 

 sists of the production of mechanism out of no 

 mechanism, of different kinds of energy out of one 

 kind of energy. The material basis of conscious- 

 ness must, then, be a generalized substance which 

 does not display the more automatic and the polar 

 forms of energy. From a physical standpoint, proto- 

 plasm is such a substance. Its instability indicates 

 weakness of chemical energy. The readiness with 

 which it undergoes retrograde metamorphosis shows 

 that it is not self-sustaining. Loew and Bokorny 



suggest, that "the cause of the living movements in 

 protoplasm is to be sought for in the intense atomic 

 movements, and therefore easy metamorphosis, of 

 its aldehyde groups of components;" the molecular 

 movements becoming molar. The position now pre- 

 sented requires the reversal of the relations of these 

 phenomena. Generalized matter must be supposed 

 to be capable of more varied molecular movements 

 than specialized matter; and it is believed that the 

 most intense of all such movements are those of 

 brain tissue in mental action, which are furthest 

 removed of all from molar movements. From this 

 point of view, when molar movements are derived 

 from molecular movements, it is by a process of run- 

 ning-down of energy, not of elevation; by an increase 

 of the distance from mental energy, not an approxi- 

 mation to it. 



The manner in which protoplasm is made at the 

 present time is highly suggestive. The first piece 

 of protoplasm had, however, no paternal protoplasm 

 from which to derive its being. The protoplasm- 

 producing energy must, therefore, have previously 

 existed in some form of matter not protoplasm. In 

 terms of the theory of catagenesis, the plant-life is 

 a derivative of the primitive life, and it has retained 

 enough of the primitive quality of self-maintenance 

 to prevent it from running down into forms of energy 

 which are below the life level; that is, such as are 

 of the inorganic chemical type, or the crystalline 

 physical type. 



If, then, some form of matter other than proto- 

 plasm has been capable of sustaining the essential 

 energy of life, it remains for future research to de- 

 tect it, and to ascertain whether it has long existed 

 as part of the earth's material substance or not. The 

 heat of the earlier stages of our planet may have 

 forbidden its presence, or it may not. If it were 

 excluded from the earth in its first stages, we may 

 recognize the validity of Sir William Thomson's sug- 

 gestion, that the physical basis of life may have 

 reached us from some other region of the cosmos by 

 transportation on a meteorite. If protoplasm in any 

 form were essential to the introduction of life on 

 our planet, this hypothesis becomes a necessary truth. 



Granting the existence of living protoplasm on 

 the earth, there is little doubt that we have some of 

 its earliest forms still with us. From these simplest 

 of living beings, both vegetable and animal kingdoms 

 have been derived. But how was the distinction 

 between the two lines of development, now so widely 

 divergent, originally produced ? The process is not 

 difficult to imagine. The original plastid dissolved 

 the salts of the earth, and appropriated the gases of 

 the atmosphere, and built for itself more protoplasm. 

 Its energy was sufficient to overcome the chemisin 

 that binds the molecules of nitrogen and hydrogen 

 in ammonia, and of carbon and oxygen in carbonic 

 dioxide. It apparently communicated to these mole- 

 cules its own method of being, and raised the type 

 of energy from the polar non-vital to the adaptive 

 vital by the process. But consciousness apparently 

 early abandoned the vegetable line. Doubtless all 

 the energies of vegetable protoplasm soon became 



