September 12, 1884.] 



SCIENCE 



243 



automatic. The plants in general, in the persons of 

 their protist ancestors, soon left a free-swimming 

 life and became sessile. Their lives thus became 

 parasitic, more automatic, and in one sense degen- 

 erate. 



The animal line may have originated in this wise : 

 Some individual protists, perhaps accidentally, de- 

 voured some of their fellows. The easy nutrition 

 which ensued was probably pleasurable, and once 

 enjoyed was repeated, and soon became a habit. 

 The excess of energy thus saved from the laborious 

 process of making protoplasm was available as the 

 vehicle of an extended consciousness. From that 

 day to this, consciousness has abandoned few if any 

 members of the animal kingdom. In many of them, 

 it has specialized into more or less mind. Organiza- 

 tion to subserve its needs has achieved a multifarious 

 development. Evolution of living types is, then, a 

 succession of elevation of platforms, on which suc- 

 ceeding ones have built. The history of one horizon 

 of life is that its own completion, but prepares the 

 way for a higher one, furnishing the latter with con- 

 ditions of a still farther development. 



If the principles here announced be true, it is 

 highly probable that all forms of energy have origi- 

 nated in the process of running-down or specializa- 

 tion from the primitive energy. One of the problems 

 to be solved by the physicists of the present and 

 future is that of a true genealogy of the different 

 kinds of energy. In this connection a leading ques- 

 tion will be the determination of the essential differ- 

 ences between the different forms of energy, and the 

 material conditions which cause the metamorphosis 

 of one kind of energy into another. 



That the tendency of purely inorganic energy is to 

 1 run down,' is well known. Inorganic chemical 

 activity constantly tends to make simpler compounds 

 out of the more complex, and to end in a satisfaction 

 of affinities which cannot be farther disturbed except 

 by access of additional energy. In the field of the 

 physical forces, we are met by the same phenomenon 

 of running down. All inorganic energies or modes 

 of motion tend to be ultimately converted into heat, 

 and heat is being steadily dissipated into space. 



The process of creation by the retrograde meta- 

 morphosis of energy, or, what is the same thing, by 

 the specialization of energy, may be called catagenesis. 

 It may be denied, however, that this process results 

 in a specialization of energy. The vital energies are 

 often regarded as the most special, and the inorganic 

 as the most simple. If we regard them, however, 

 solely in the light of the essential nature of energy, 

 i. e., power, we must see that the chemical and physi- 

 cal forces are most specialized. The range of each 

 species is absolutely limited to one kind of effect, 

 and their diversity from each other is total. How 

 different this from the versatility of the vital energy! 

 It seems to dominate all forms of conversion of 

 energy, by the mechanisms which it has, by evolu- 

 tion, constructed. Thus, if the inorganic forces are 

 the products of a primitive condition of energy which 

 had the essential characteristics of vital energy, it 

 has been by a process of specialization. As we have 



seen, it is this specialization which is everywhere 

 inconsistent with life. 



If we consider the relations of the different kinds 

 of energy to each other and to consciousness, it is 

 difficult to draw the line between conscious and 

 unconscious states of energy. One reason is, that, 

 although a given form of energy may be unconscious, 

 consciousness may apprehend the action by perceiv- 

 ing its results. The relations may be expressed as 

 follows : — 



A. Designed (always molecular). Examples. 



I. Conscious. 



1. Involving effort ' Voluntary ' acts. 



i STot InvoMng effort j SSSffSSSS-. 



II. Unconscious. 



3. Involving mental process .... Unconscious automatic. 

 i. Not involving mental process . . . Reflex. 



B. Not designed. 



I. Molecular. 



5. Electric. 



6. Chemical, 



Physical, 



Crystallific and non-crystallific. 



II. Molar. 

 Cosmic. 



The only strictly molar energies of the above list 

 are the cosmical movements of the heavenly bodies. 

 The others are molecular, although they give rise to 

 molar movements, as those of the muscles, of mag- 

 netism, etc. Some molar movements of organic be- 

 ings are not, in their last phases, designed; as those 

 produced by nervous diseases. 



The transition between the organic and the inor- 

 ganic energies may be possibly found in the electric 

 group. Its influence on life, and its resemblance to 

 nerve-force, are well known. It also compels chemi- 

 cal unions otherwise impracticable ; thus resembling 

 the protoplasm of plants, whose energy in actively 

 resisting the disintegrating inorganic forces of nature 

 is so well known. Perhaps this type of force is an 

 early-born of the primitive energy, one which has 

 not descended so far in the scale as the chemism 

 which holds so large a part of nature in the embrace 

 of death. 



Vibration is inseparable from our ideas of motion 

 or energy, not excluding conscious energy. There 

 are reasons for supposing that in the latter type of 

 activity the vibrations are the most rapid of all those 

 characteristic of the forces. A centre of such vibra- 

 tions in generalized matter would radiate them in 

 all directions. With radiant divergence the wave- 

 lengths would become longer, and their rate of move- 

 ment slower. In the differing rates of vibrations, 

 we may trace not only the different forms of energy, 

 but diverse results in material aggregations. Such 

 may have been the origin of the specialization of 

 energy and of matter which we behold in nature. 



Such thoughts arise unbidden as a remote but still 

 a legitimate induction from a study of the wonder- 

 ful phenomenon of animal motion, — a phenomenon 

 everywhere present, yet one which retreats, as we 

 pursue it, into the dimness of the origin of things. 

 And when we follow it to its fountain-head, we seem 

 to have reached the origin of all energy, and it turns 

 upon us, the king and master of the worlds. 



