ii6 
SCIENCE. 
two directions at least, in its rate of action and of its rela- 
tive energy, we may already measure thought, as we meas- 
ure any other form of energy, by the effects it produces. 
Passing now to the consideration of the general question 
of the transtormation of energy which is effected by living 
beings, attention may be called to one or two points in gen- 
eral physics, as bearing upon its solution. The great law 
of the dissipation of energy, as modified by Thomson from 
the statement of Clausius, is thus stated : “The entropy of 
the universe tends to zero.” In other words, the energy of 
the universe available for transmutation is approaching ex- 
tinction. This conclusion is based upon the fact that while 
every form of energy can be completely converted into heat, 
heat cannot be completely converted into other forms of 
energy, nor these into each other. Hence it arises that en- 
ergy is being gradually dissipated as heat. Moreover, since 
transformation can only result when heat passes from a 
higher to a lower temperature, it follows that when that per- 
fect equilibrium of temperaiure is reached toward which 
events are tending, there can be no other energy than heat ; 
and this absolutely inconvertible, irrevocable. To apply 
this law to the present case, the muscle, for example, is a 
machine for transforming the energy of food into work- 
Since, consequently, this conversion is not complete, it fol- 
lows that heat must appear as a necessary result of mtiscu 
lar action. The heat of animal life, consequently, is not 
heat especially provided ; it is simply the heat which inev- 
itably results from an incomplete conversion of energy. 
Again, the form of chemical action thus far assumed by 
physiologists fo account for the energy of the living animal 
has been combustion. But the science of thermo-chemistry, 
as developed in late years by Berthelot and Thomsen, has 
proved, that direct union of chemical substances may not 
only not evolve heat, but may actually absorb it. It ap- 
pears, too, that thermal changes accompany all forms of 
chemical change, those of decomposition and exchange as 
well as those of synthesis. The animal absorbs highly 
complex substances as food, capable of innumerable stages 
of retrogressive metamorphosis before elimination. In 
each of these stages heat is evolved, being the energy suc- 
cessively stored up by the plant when it repeated these 
stages in the inverse order. 
Another point of interest has reference to the modern 
views of capillarity. In 1838, J. W. Draper showed that 
capillarity is an electrical phenomena. Quite recently, 
Lippmann has developed and extended this view and fully 
confirmed it. Whenever the free surface of a liquid, curved 
by capillary action, is electrified it changes its form ; and 
conversely, when such a surface is made by mechanical 
means to change its form, an electromotive force is de- 
veloped. Based upon this principle Lippmann constructed 
a capillary reversible engine and an extremely sensi- 
tive capillary electometer. The former, when a current of 
electricity was applied to it, developed mechanical work 
and ran as a motor. When turned by hand, it became an 
electromotor. In the animal organism there are it is true 
but a few free surfaces where this action can take place. 
But Gore has shown that the same phenomenon appears 
between two liquids in contact, their boundary being al- 
tered in character by electrification. Indeed, when we con- 
sider the production of electricity by osmose, and of heat 
and electricity both, by imbibition, both capillary phenom- 
ena, the wonder is not that so much energy is evolved by 
the organism, but that it is so little. If the physical and 
chemical changes which take place within the body took 
place without it, there would be an abundant evolution of 
energy. Can we doubt that these changes are the cause of 
the energy exhibited by the organism ? 
Thus far, when we have spoken of a living being, we 
have had reference to the organism as a whole, and this of 
a rather complex kind. In this view of the case, however, 
we find that biological micioscopists do not agree with us. 
“ The cell alone,” says Kiiss, “ is the essentially vital ele- 
ment.” Says Beale, — “There is in living matter nothing 
which can be called a mechanism, nothing in which structure 
can be discerned. A little transparent colorless material is 
the seat of these marvellous powers or properties which the 
form, structure and function of the tissues and organs 
of all living things are determined.” And again, “ How- 
ever much organisms and their tissues in their fully formed 
state may vary as regards the character, properties and 
composition of the formed material, all were first in the 
condition of clear, transparent, structureless, formless liv- 
ing matter.” So Ranvier : “ Cellular elements possess all 
the essential vital properties of the complete organism.” 
And Allman, in his address as President of the British 
Association last year, is still more explicit. “ Every living 
being,” he says, “has protoplasm as the essential matter of 
every living element of its structure.” “ No one who con- 
templates this spontaneously moving matter can deny that 
it is alive. Liquid as it is, it is a living liquid ; organless 
and structureless as it is, it manifests the essential pheno- 
mena of life.” “ Coextensive with the whole of the organic 
nature — every vital act being referable to some mode or 
property of protoplasm, it becomes to the biologist what 
the ether is to the physicist.” From these quotations it 
would seem that even in the highest animal there is noth- 
ing living but protoplasm or germinal matter “transparent, 
colorless, and, as far as can be ascertained by examination 
with the highest powers of the microscope, perfectly struc- 
tureless. It exhibits these same characters at every period 
of its existence.” Neither the contractile tissue of the 
muscle, the axis-cylinder of the nerve, nor the secreting 
cell of the gland, is living, according to Beale. Hence it 
would be fair to draw the inference that no vital force 
should be required to explain the phenomena of the non- 
living matter of the body, such as the contraction of the 
muscle or the function of the nerve. If this be conceded it 
is a great point gained ; since the phenomenon of life be- 
comes vastly simplified when we have to account for it 
only as exhibited in this one single form of living matter, 
protoplasm. In describing its properties, Allman includes 
this remarkable mobility, these spontaneous movements, 
and says, “They result from its proper irritability, its essential 
constitution as living matter. From the facts there is but 
one legitimate conclusion, that life is a property of proto- 
plasm.” Beale, however, will not allow that life is “ a 
property” of protoplasm. “It cannot be a property of 
matter,” he says, “ because it is in all respects essentially 
different in its actions from all acknowledged properties of 
matter.” But the properties of bodies are only the char- 
acters by which we differentiate them. Two bodies having 
the same properties would only be two portions of the same 
substance. Because life, therefore, is unlike other prop- 
erties of matter, it by no means follows that it is not a 
property of matter. No dictum is more absolute in science 
than the one which predicates properties upon constitution. 
To say that this property exhibited by protoplasm, marvel- 
lous and even unique though it be, is not a natural result 
of the constitution of the matter itself, but is due to an un- 
known entity, a tertium quid , which inhabits and controls 
it, is opposed to all scientific analogy and experience. To 
the statement of the vitalist that there is no evidence that 
life is a property of matter, we may reply with emphasis 
that there is not the slightest proof that it is not. 
Chemistry tells us that complexity of composition in- 
volves complexity of properties. The grand progress which 
Organic Chemistry has made in recent times has been ow- 
ing to the distinct recognition of the influence of structure 
upon properties. Isomerism is one of its most significant 
developments. The number of possible insomers increases 
enormously with the complexity of the molecule. Granted 
that we now know several of the proteid group of substancs : 
how man} r thousand may there be yet to know? Bodies of 
such extreme complexity of constitution may well have an 
indefinite number of isomers. Not only does chemistry not 
say that there cannot be such a thing but she encourages 
the expectation that there will be yet found the precise 
proteid of which the changes of protoplasm are properties. 
The rapid march of recent organic synthesis makes it quite 
certain that every distinct chemical substance of the living 
body will ultimately be produced in the laboratory ; and 
this from inorganic materials. Given only the exact con- 
stitution of a compound, and its synthesis follows. When, 
therefore, the chemist shall succeed in producing a mass 
constitutionally identical with protoplasmic albumin, there 
is every reason to expect that it will exhibit all the pheno- 
mena which characterize its life ; and this equally whether 
protoplasm be a single substance or a mixture of several 
closely allied substances. 
But here a word should be said concerning a remark- 
able physical condition assumed by matter in organ- 
