Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/782

762 animal there is nothing living but protoplasm or germinal matter, "transparent, colorless, and, as far as can be ascertained by examination with the highest powers of the microscope, perfectly structureless. It exhibits these same characters at every period of its existence." Neither the contractile tissue of the muscle, the axis-cylinder of the nerve, nor the secreting cell of the gland, is living, according to Beale. Hence it would be fair to draw the inference that no vital force should be required to explain the phenomena of the non-living matter of the body, such as the contraction of the muscle or the function of the nerve. If this be conceded, it is a great point gained; since the phenomenon of life becomes vastly simplified when we have to account for it only as exhibited in this one single form of living matter, protoplasm. In describing its properties, Allman includes this remarkable mobility, these spontaneous movements, and says: "They result from its proper irritability, its essential constitution as living matter. From the facts there is but one legitimate conclusion, that life is a property of protoplasm." Beale, however, will not allow that life is "a property" of protoplasm. "It can not be a property of matter," he says, "because it is in all respects essentially different in its actions from all acknowledged properties of matter." But the properties of bodies are only the characters by which we differentiate them. Two bodies having the same properties would only be two portions of the same substance. Because life, therefore, is unlike other properties of matter, it by no means follows that it is not a property of matter. No dictum is more absolute in science than the one which predicates properties upon constitution. To say that this property exhibited by protoplasm, marvelous and even unique though it be, is not a natural result of the constitution of the matter itself, but is due to an unknown entity, a tertium quid, which inhabits and controls it, is opposed to all scientific analogy and experience. To the statement of the vitalist that there is no evidence that life is a property of matter, we may reply with emphasis that there is not the slightest proof that it is not.

Chemistry tells us that complexity of composition involves complexity of properties. The grand progress which organic chemistry has made in recent times has been owing to the distinct recognition of the influence of structure upon properties. Isomerism is one of its most significant developments. The number of possible isomers increases enormously with the complexity of the molecule. Granted that we now know several of the proteid group of substances: how many thousands may there be yet to know? Bodies of such extreme complexity of constitution may well have an indefinite number of isomers. Not only does Chemistry not say that there can not be such a thing, but she encourages the expectation that there will yet be found the precise proteid of which the changes of protoplasm are properties. The rapid march of recent organic synthesis makes it quite certain