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ORGANIC DEATH. 
Nov., 1890. 
the result of the interaction of forces. It does nothing but 
give more or less play to natural tendencies. It is, in fact, 
a system of barriers stopping the progress of organic force in 
certain directions and leaving it unchecked in other 
directions. It can kill, but it cannot give life. It can 
destroy, but it cannot create. If the general tendency of 
organic force were retrogressive, selection could not alter it, 
but would only retard the retrogression. The fact that 
under the influence of the law of natural selection the life 
of the world has become continually richer, more complex, 
and more beautiful, proves that there is in the fundamental 
force by which that life is carried on an innate tendency in 
that direction. If, then, organic force differs from 
mechanical force, in that the one carries with it its own law 
of dissolution while the other perishes only from external 
resistance, can any reason for this difference be imagined, 
either physiological or metaphysical ? 
Mechanical force exhibits itself in various wavs, either 
. 
as a simple motion from point to point in space, or as a 
simple oscillation passing over the same space in contrary 
directions, or as an undulation which is a continuous 
succession of oscillations, or as a svstem of rotations with 
centripetal and centrifugal actions nearly balancing one 
another, as among celestial bodies. 
Organic force does not exhibit itself in any of these forms, 
but has a special form of its own. An organism is a centre 
which continually draws to itself surrounding material as 
food, storing up the energy of that material until a certain 
degree of progressive concentration is attained, beyond which 
it has no power to pass. Having reached this climacteric, 
the concentrated energy begins to disperse, and organic 
death soon follows. 
In all the forms of mechanical force the dispersion of the 
energy is due to some external opposing force of friction, or 
repulsion, or adhesion. In organic force that dispersion may 
be due to some form of resistance, but it is internal and 
independent of its surroundings. 
All energy is doubtless fundamentally the same through¬ 
out the universe, but its modes of action are various, and if 
we imagine its action in the organic world to be in the form 
of a concentrating instead of an undulatory wave, we find in 
that difference a possible explanation of organic periodicity 
and Organic Death.* 
*The discussion on the President’s Address and an account of the 
Excursions will appear in a subsequent number. 
