ON THE DIRKCTIVITY OF LIFE. 



249 



conditions, in the case of plants, such as dry, moist, water, 

 alpine, arctic, &c., and the first observation is that plants of no 

 relationship whatever, but living under similar conditions, are all 

 equally adapted to them ; and that even in different continents 

 they often assume the same forms with regard to their vegetative 

 organs, i.e., the roots, stems, and leaves ; but are distinguished 

 by their flowers and fruits, which record their right positions of 

 classification. 



This leads to the question : — Why are they alike ? 



The inference of a very wide induction is that the Cause lies 

 in the Direct Action of the external conditions of life to which 

 the plant responcls, and the result is Adaptations to those 

 conditions. Such are the consequences of the Directivity of 

 Life. Lastly, I repeat, experiments verify this induction. 



The conclusion is that Ecology proves that Evolution is the 

 result of spontaneous adaptability to changed conditions of life. 

 In other words Self- Adaptation is the Origin of Species. 



The word " Directivity " is new, and does not occur in any 

 dictionary. 



We are indebted to Sir A. H. Church, F.E.S., the eminent 

 chemist, for the use of it. He invented it for he felt a want 

 when lecturing on the making of organic products in the 

 laboratory. " I coined it," he writes me, " to avoid the use of 

 force, energy, etc., when describing the parallelism between the 

 QhQmi^i directing in his laboratory j^i^actice chemical forces in 

 making true organic compounds, and that mysterious something 

 which employs the same forces to make the same compounds in 

 the plant or animal." 



That mysterious " something," as far as human observation 

 can carry us, is Life, and Life's Directivity applies to every part 

 of an organism, from the original cell to. the structure of every 

 tissue and every organ. 



When we remember that the universe contains nothing but 

 matter and force, that the former consists of about eighty 

 so-called elements, that none of these ^^e?' se is alive or has any 

 spontaneous poiuer to move ; for there must be some extraneous 

 force to cause their motion, if matter be moving in any direction ; 

 and again that no force can direct itself or act upon matter in a 

 determined, purposeful manner ; then it becomes obvious that 

 life cannot arise out of non-living forces or non-living matter. 

 It is not that protoplasm creates life, but the reverse ; no new 

 protoplasm (" The physical basis of Life," as Huxley called it) 

 is ever made except through living protoplasm, or rather by 

 the life in it ; since protoplasm consists of some half dozen 

 inert elements chemically combined in certain proportions. 



