Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/638

 6l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

If, now, in consequence of accidents, or in pursuance of their natural tendency, certain inferior organisms, overstepping their limit of energy, assume a form deviating from the spherical form, and consequently approaching the cylindrical form, they will be immediately subdivided into several spheres. For another theorem demonstrated by Plateau is this : A liquid cylinder, withdrawn from the action of gravitation, becomes unstable and subdivides into several spheres, as soon as its length exceeds the circumference of its cross-section. This theorem may explain, in part, from the mechanical point of view, the reproduction of inferior species by simple division. This occurrence would be first produced accidentally and would be repeated because of its utility.

The preceding shows us the natural relationship which unites the laws of inorganic equilibrium to those of organic equilibrium. However, the latter presents some special characteristics which it is advisable to elucidate, and which in their turn prepare us for the interpretation of social statics.

Vegetables and animals are composed of the same elements that enter into the composition of inorganic matter, but these elements are assembled in combinations which are not found in inorganic matter. There is an essential substance, composed of water and proteid substances, fat, carbohydrates, and minerals, which enters into the texture of all plants and animals in life. This substance is protoplasm. Protoplasm is a juxta- position of divers proteid substances (albuminoids). In order that protoplasm may have life, it is necessary that it be intact and absorb water. While nothing limits the dimensions of inorganic combinations, such as crystals, every protoplasmic mass, as soon as it attains certain dimensions, divides itself spontaneously into several distinct masses equivalent to the mass from which they originated. Protoplasm exists, then, only in the form of individuals having a limited size. This is why all the living beings are necessarily composed of cells or of a society of cells.

In contrast with inorganic bodies, living plants grow by adding to the substances which constitute them similar sub-