Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/786

766 The evidence, then, would seem conclusive that, since the protoplasm of the animal and the vegetable kingdoms is identical, the former in all cases being derived from the latter, the animal as such neither produces nor vitalizes any protoplasm. Two inferences seem naturally to follow from this conclusion: 1. That all the properties of animal protoplasm, and of the animal organism of which it constitutes the essential part, must have a previous existence in the plant; 2. That hence the solution of the life-question in the Myxomycetes will solve the life-problem for the highest vertebrate.

Another consideration which must not be left out of the account in any discussion of the life-question is the potent influence of environment. Ordinary examples of this influence pass before our eyes every day. Heat necessitates the germination of the seed, and light causes the plant to grow. Gravity obliges its root to grow downward and its stem to ascend. Certain sensations from without excite inevitably muscular contraction; and a ludicrous idea may provoke laughter in defiance of the will. Epidemic and epizoötic diseases show the dependence of function upon external conditions, and the germ theory demonstrates the utter disproportionality of the cause to the effect. The remarkable similarity in the periodicity observed between sunspots and the weather has been extended to include the appearance of locusts and the advent of the plague. Even the body politic feels its influence, Jevons having established a coincident periodicity for commercial crises.

The modern theory of energy, however, puts this influence in a still stronger light. As defined hitherto, energy is either motion or position; is kinetic or potential. Energy of position derives its value obviously from the fact that in virtue of attraction it may become energy of motion. But attraction implies action at a distance; and action at a distance implies that matter may act where it is not. This of course is impossible; and hence action at a distance, and with it attraction and potential energy, are disappearing from the language of science. But what conception is it which is taking its place? By what action does the sun hold our earth in its orbit? The answer is to be found in the properties of the ether which fills all space. The existence of this ether, the phenomena of light and electricity abundantly prove. While so tenuous that astronomy has been taxed to prove that it exerts an appreciable resistance upon the least of the celestial bodies, its elasticity is such that it transmits a compression with a wellnigh infinite velocity. On the one hand, Thomson has determined its inferior limit, and finds that a cubic mile of it would weigh only one thousand millionth of a pound; on the other, Herschel has calculated that, if an amount of it equal in weight to a cubic inch of air be inclosed in a cubic inch of space, its reaction outward would be upward of seventeen billions of pounds. Instead of being represented, as is our air, by the pressure of an homogeneous atmosphere