232 



SCIENCE. 



confounded with respiration, and the mistaken concep- 

 tion was spread abroad that plants breathe in direct oppo- 

 sition to animals by absorbing carbonic acid and exhaling 

 oxygen. By means of anaesthetics we can separate these 

 two phenomena. An aquatic plant placed in etherized 

 water ceases to absorb carbonic acid and emit oxygen. 

 It however, remains green, and breathes as animals do, a 

 phenomenon which existed before, but was hidden by the 

 assimilation of the carbon ; still, further back, we can 

 encounter one of those phenomena long considered 

 chemical and which nearly escape vital acts inasmuch as 

 in the laboratory some of them can be reproduced with- 

 out the aid of life. I speak of fermentations. These 

 are produced by a microscopic fungus, which decom- 

 poses fermentable matter, nourishing itself with a portion, 

 while the remainder forms a new product which stays in 

 the liquid. These fermentations, in spite of their ex- 

 treme tenuity and their inferiority in the organic scale, 

 are susceptible of being stupefied by ether and losing 

 their active power. We may place them with impunity 

 in close contact with the liquid, but the latter remains 

 undisturbed. 



Thus, from the very bottom of the ladder, from the 

 simplest protoplasm, and the most insignificant fermen- 

 tation to the most elevated creature to be found on the 

 earth, we find always the same characteristic and funda- 

 mental property of life, modified, it is true, to a degree 

 which forces us to follow the thread of its diverse forms 

 step by step, but always identical in substance, and in- 

 variably demonstrable by those infallible reactive agents, 

 anaesthetics. Without this property there can be no life, 

 or rather no active life, no exterior manifestations. With 

 it, any plant or animal, no matter how simple in construc- 

 tion, develops, grows, prospers and reproduces itself. It 

 is easy to see, therefore, that sensibility is the principal 

 attribute of all organic beings, and in some way the 

 cause of everything that takes place within us. If, as 

 Condillac says, we should take an immovable and in- 

 sensible image and endow it gradually with all our 

 senses, it would soon rise from nonentity and begin to 

 augment the sphere of its knowledge. By giving it the 

 sense of hearing, we open that vast field of observation 

 and reasoning which procures sound, but it could form 

 no idea of the existence of matter, or of sunshine, or of 

 taste. It could only conceive one thing, until put in 

 complete possession of the other senses. 



Intelligence, that precious gitt which alone renders us 

 superior to other creatures, is, therefore, nothing more 

 than the result of our accumulated impressions, con- 

 trolled one by the other, and we may even affirm that the 

 man who has felt is alone capable of thought. The de- 

 velopment of our minds should be adequate to the devel- 

 opment of our sensibility, and in fact, it can be observed 

 everywhere, that those persons whose senses are the most 

 refined, possess the highest form of intelligence. I may 

 even go so far as to parody the famous proverb and sav 

 to my neighbor ; "Tell me what you feel, and I will tell 

 you what you think." 



Not so very long ago, as we have seen, Linnaeus refused 

 to admit of sensibility in regard to plants, saying that it was 

 an attribute of the animal world only. An attentive in- 

 vestigation, however, causes us to reject such distinctions 

 to-day. Let us even go further back, leaving behind us 

 the lowest forms of organic matter, and see if any phe- 

 nomenon approaching sensibility is to be met with. In 

 a word, let us ask the following question : Is matter 

 sensible ? 



Referring once more to Claude Bernard's definition of 

 the term, " sensibility is the ensemble of all kinds of 

 modifications determined in living beings by different 

 stimuli," we find no possibility of its application to the 

 properties of matter, for it distinctly states that the con- 

 dition is an attribute of living beings only. But a mere 

 definition should not arrest our investigation, for it is 

 nothing more than the result of knowledge hitherto ac- 



quired, and as such admits of change. The substance of 

 it all amounts to this ; given a living being placed in im- 

 mediate contact with matter, and the matter will act upon 

 the being, producing sensation. But how do we know that 

 the living being does not in its turn act upon the matter 

 and modify its condition ? I will even affirm that life 

 does act upon certain substances, for fermentation is a 

 positive proof that this is the case. If I place a sweet- 

 ened solution of wine in contact with the air, a short 

 time will suffice to develop therein millions of tiny living 

 creatures proceeding from atmospheric germs. This fer- 

 mentation increases with great rapidity, producing a 

 chemical effect, so that after a certain time the sugar 

 will be transformed into carbonic acid and alcohol. The 

 presence, therefore, of life in the liquid served to modify 

 the properties, and in this we see one of those strange 

 occurrences where the so-called vital forces are so closely 

 allied to chemical processes, that we hardly know 

 whether the phenomenon is the result of the biologists' 

 skill or the chemist's. Each of these savants have 

 claimed it as their own, and with reason too, for chem- 

 istry and biology are twin sisters who can never 

 quarrel. 



When the sugar is once transformed into alcohol an- 

 other organism appears, which, in its turn, determines the 

 transformation of this substance into another, acetic acid, 

 by means of an analogous fermentation. It is a remark- 

 able fact, however, that while the chemist has, as yet, 



l been unable to produce alcoholic fermentation by means 

 of the action of matter upon matter, he can, on the con- 

 trary, easily determine the second without the aid of life 

 at all. It is, therefore, the presence of these bodies which 

 acts, and not the construction of the fermentation. It 

 is not that life decomposes the liquid, but that the liquid 

 decomposes itself when assimilated with certain agents. 

 It is therefore sensible of their action. 



Once en route, it is not difficult to multiply examples 

 and to demonstrate that light, heat, electricity and all 

 other forces which operate upon our sensibility, are uni- 

 form modifiers of matter. What is a photographer's 

 negative but a glass plate sensitive to the action of light ? 

 Is not a piece of wire about which we pass an electric 



! current sensible of electricity, inasmuch as it acquires 



' thereby a new property, that of attracting a like piece of 



J wire? It becomes, in fact, magnetic. 



Heat, as we can observe every day, modifies bodies to 

 such an extent, that beneath its influence they liquify and 

 evaporate. All these facts demonstrate clearly that mat- 

 ter is sensible of exterior agents. According to the sec- 

 ond part of Claude Bernard's definition, it possesses the 

 "aptitude to reply to the provocation of these stimuli by 



' means of modifications." 



Consequently, universal attraction, that law which af- 

 firms that all bodies attract each other in direct ratio to 

 their mass, and in inverse ratio to the square of their 

 distance, is merely a simple and general way of express- 

 ing the sensibility of matter. 



CONTRIBUTION TOWARD A NEW COSMIC 

 HYPOTHESIS. 



By Samuel J. Wallace. 



Our familiar knowledge and ideas in astronomy relate 

 generally to matter in large bodies, and in great num- 

 bers of small bodies, which now and then fall into the 

 larger as meteorites. This seems to show a condition of 

 slow centralization, as if to finally collect all matter, 

 however far distributed, into a few large bodies. And 

 a consistent conception requires in its plan, somewhere, 

 a means of decentralization, or distribution of matter 

 through space again, to form a closed system of 

 action. 



Gravic force as one of the interchangeable forms of kin- 



