downward process comes first, and we suppose gravity, chemical affinity, and so on accordingly. But from the organic world we receive the impression of the correlative, or upward, processes coming first; the decay is hidden; there is the seemingly spontaneous vitalisation, warmth, activity. Accordingly, we have invented life, or vital force, as a primarily existing power. But in what respects do these two classes of ideas differ? On what firmer basis stands gravity than vitality— chemical affinity than the "organising influence"? In each case we have simply put up as a first thing what comes first to us, what our particular relation to the series of phenomena suggests as primary or as the starting-point. Now, doubtless these two opposite conceptions have to be brought into harmony, and here appears to me to be one chief value of the recognition of the connection between nutrition and decay; it brings into unity our fundamental conceptions in respect to organic and inorganic nature. But let us observe: this unity is obtained through interpreting the organic by the inorganic. Doubtless the phenomena may be marshalled intelligibly (up to a certain point) in this order. If we assume the unintelligible points in the inorganic world as granted, we may bring the phenomena of life into unity with its phenomena; but then we must remember that we do assume these unintelligible data. We are haunted still by those dim ghosts of gravity and chemical affinity and the like, and listen in vain for the cock-crowing that is to banish them. I do not know, indeed, that the flash that seemed to promise so fair an illumination does not make the darkness around us more painfully visible. But perhaps there is a different plan. We try interpreting the near, the better known, the living world, by that far off, dimly apprehended one, which we call dead, and we find that to a certain point we can succeed. But if we can succeed so, cannot we succeed also the other way? How if we could interpret-they being proved the same—the dead by the living? May not the vital force, after all, give us a better key to chemical affinity than chemical affinity gives to vital force, and leave us finally not standing spell-bound before a caput mortuum of inconceivable attractions and repulsions, but face to face in presence of a power plastic to the intellect and cognate to the soul. Let us for the present avoid, or at least defer, the phenomena of gravity, not denying, in the meantime, that they present special difficulties. But it seems to me that from the point of view above suggested the phenomena of the so-called chemical affinity appear in a fresh and less. hopeless light. Take, on the one hand, oxygen and hydrogen, and on the other, water. It is evidently an incomplete statement to say that the latter "consists of" the former. An essential part of the phenomena is thus ignored. For oxygen and hydrogen will combine and form water only on the giving out of a large quantity of heat, ie., of force. The two gases are water plus force, and water represents the gases minus force, for they cannot be obtained from it except by the addition of the same amount of force that they gave out in uniting. Now, this relation which exists between oxygen and hydrogen in the form of gas, and their equivalent of water, evidently is traceable throughout the entire domain of chemistry. In relation to chemical phenomena, all substances may be classified in one of two groups-as having force present with them, or as not having it. Not that such classification perhaps ever ceases to be relative; but it is, for this reason, none the less real. For example, oxygen and sodium contain force, which soda does not; so, too, carbon and oxygen contain force, which carbonic acid does not; but soda and carbonic acid contain force which carbonate of soda does not. But I take it that neither this relativity nor any doubtful points of detail in the least degree obscures the general distinction; which, indeed, in a more limited scope, has been laid down by Professor Graham as obtaining between the crystalline and colloid groups, and which is obvious enough as between hot bodies and cold ones, charged and uncharged nonconductors of electricity, and so on. We take, then, water on the one hand, and oxygen and hydrogen on the other, to stand to us as representatives of the whole domain of chemistry. Considered substantially, they are one; the water expresses the condition of the substance without (a certain kind and degree of) force; the gases present the same substance with that force. Now, what is the simple statement of the phenomena given in the formation of water? This surely under certain conditions (say an electric spark coming into relation with the gases) the force is " transmitted," ceases to be in them, and begins to be in something else, and coincidently the substance is found in the condition which it has in the absence of the force (water). Here arises evidently the same question as that which I raised before which comes first in thought-order, the transmission of the force, or the alteration of condition of the substance? Is not the balance of reason on the side of the former ? To say of force that it is transmitted or transmits itself, what is it but to say that it is force -that motion is motion, and exists in its movement? It is the nature of motion to be transmitted to whatsoever that is capable of moving comes into relation with it. That force should be transmitted at whatsoever opportunity occurs, is but saying in other words that motion takes the direction of least resistance. Our thoughts may be helped here by referring to another form of chemical process-the galvanic current. Chemical action, as we say, is set up on union of the poles; but what is the union of the poles but making a passage for the "easier transmission of force;" in a word, presenting a direction of less resistance? Then, when the force which is in the zinc and sulphuric acid can be transmitted, the substance presents itself in the condition which it has in the absence of force (sulphate of zinc). Now, are not the production of water on application of an electric spark and the production of sulphate of zinc on union of the poles of a battery analogous dynamic processes? Is not the presentation of a direction of less resistance to the force the determining moment in each instance, and is not this change in the relation of the force the true dynamic process? If so, then what follows is, that we have no need to assume any chemical affinities; the apparent change of substance is a passive phenomenon; it expresses simply the law that force cannot at once be and not be in the same place. I would add only, in respect to life, the question, whether the "conditions of decay "—the heat, moisture, air-be not rather, in truth, the conditions of the transmission of force. Then, when the force is transmitted, whether to the surrounding air, as heat, in which case no life results, or to other particles, making them living, alike decomposition ensues; the recurrence of the state in which the force thus transmitted is no longer present. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. |