Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/327

Rh may be regarded as only one of the applications of a much broader law. That law is that evolution is essentially a process of storing cosmical energy. All cosmical energy results from the interaction of the great correlative and antithetical (rather than antagonistic) gravitant and radiant forces of the universe. When these forces bear a certain ratio to each other their interaction produces systems primarily chemical, then planetary, and finally biotic. The whole may be correctly characterized as so many forms or modes of organization. There is no more perfect example of organization than a solar system, of which ours is only one of thousands. But every chemical combination is also a system no less perfectly organized. In chemical combinations, however, there are all degrees of complexity, from the atom of hydrogen to the molecule of albumen 5000 times larger. And beyond this last is protoplasm whose chemical formula cannot be written, but which constitutes, in the words of Huxley, "the physical basis of life." It could be shown (and I have endeavored to show) that at each step in this ascending series of organized products a new and higher energy is acquired, that of protoplasm constituting the highest expression of this law in the chemical series and fairly bridging over the interval between the inorganic and the organic.

Although chemical organization can go no farther than the production of protoplasm, the law does not cease to act, but henceforth it must follow a somewhat different method. Up to this stage all activity is molecular. In the next or biotic stage it is molar. In all inorganic products the motion which their increasingly active properties prove to exist is imperceptible to sense. In protoplasm and all organic products the motion is perceptible to sense. It is here called spontaneous, and spontaneous mobility is supposed to be a criterion of life, but in reality the imperceptible motion of inorganic matter is as truly spontaneous as are the activities of a living organism. Biotic organization takes place by means of structure. The lowest organisms are said to be unorganized. They consist entirely of protoplasm.