THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 
bS 
Or 
both in inanimate and animate nature. The whole business, 
including the electrical stress, is caused by portions of matter 
in motion, 
We know that all things that have reached the molecule 
stage are more or less magnetic, and consequently electric. 
Portions of matter meet, clash, and thereby set up a revo- 
lution of the portions, and cause electrical and magnetic 
effects ; and some of these in that condition of motion as a 
result of their movements form around themselves an 
envelope or skin, or skins, which may be of air, or other 
matter, within which the electrical and magnetic stresses and 
effects are produced. Much depends on the quality and 
strength of the skin, what I term “ power of skin.’’ In 
many cases of inanimate phenomena, and in primitive forms 
of living matter, when the internal stress becomes too great 
for the power of the envelope or skin, it stretches; and at 
its weakest point a rupture takes place, a daughter cell is 
formed by breaking away from the parent mass; and the 
mother cell as a cell perhaps perishes, or, as in some cases, 
two cells are formed. There are many forms of division of 
cells, with various results. In the case of some others the 
power of the skin is sufficient to resist dissolution (although 
cells may be multiplied by division within) but not to resist 
the distortion of its shape, and consequently, depending on 
the pressures within and without, and the power of the “skin, 
we get an immense variety of form and size of both non- 
living and of living matter. It is the power of the skin, 
combined with the pressures within and without, etc., that 
gives us great trees and large animals, and such an immense 
variety of trees and animals. The power of the skin, and 
the capacity to form it, is also one of the great secrets of 
*Take the word skin as meaning envelope. 
