10 Transactions Texas Academy of Science. — 1906. 
yet know how inorganic activities become systematized into organic, 
or what determines their form as vegetable or animal. The cell still 
keeps its secret. But that inorganic is transformed into organic is 
plainly shown by every breath taken, every meal eaten, and every 
development of an embryo to maturity, as the reverse transition is 
shown by all waste processes, including death itself. As men organ- 
ize themselves into states, and lesser associations, which have organs 
and modes of activity which no man has, so, it would seem, molecules 
organize themselves into cells, and cells into living beings, which 
differ even more vastly in structure and function from the units 
composing them. 
In substance, then, comparative psychology teaches that a man is 
a complicated system of activities, sensitive and conscious; an animal 
a less complicated system, sensitive and conscious; a plant a still 
less complicated system, sensitive, but only dimly conscious, if at 
all so; and inorganic matter, the simplest system of activities we 
know, whether either sensitive or conscious we are not yet prepared 
to say. So much is quite plain. But all is not said. It is also 
plain that inorganic, or so-called dead matter has, in the war of 
evolution, developed into organic or living matter, and that matter 
is being daily transformed into living, yes, into conscious beings, 
and living and even conscious beings are being daily transformed 
back into mere matter. These plain facts of themselves throw not 
a little light on the nature of matter. For they show that the con- 
stitution and nature of matter must be such as to allow of the de- 
velopment and interchange discovered. Matter cannot be very dead, 
it cannot be blankly non-conscious, it would seem, if everywhere 
and at all times it is, in the ordinary routine of the world, nourishing 
and stimulating life and consciousness, which in their iurn dissolve 
into mere matter in the same normal way. 
Such, too briefly and imperfectly stated, are the contributions of 
philosophy, and its component and ancillary sciences, to our 
knowledge of matter. Next we turn to the physical sciences them- 
selves, physics, chemistry, and newborn chemico-physics, and find, as 
will presently appear, a singularly impressive confirmation of the 
results set forth. This should not surprise us. It merely adds one 
more to the many instances where philosophy’s reasoned conclusions 
have proved prophetic of the more concretely reached results of ex- 
perimental science. The former, glancing over the promised land 
throughout its rich extent, spies out its prominent landmarks, and 
sets them up as goals to guide the slow and laborious but sure occu- 
pation which it falls to the lot of the latter to undertake. Each 
task yields its own delights, and each performs its peculiar service. 
