Consider now the indirect, or reversed, Carnot cycle. We begin with the inert matter, resulting from the metabolism of the animal, carbon dioxide, water, nitrate, and a few more mineral substances. We have the energy of solar radiation. By virtue of the living chlorophyll plastid in the cells of the green plant, this solar radiation uses the carbon dioxide and water as raw materials in the elaboration of starch. At the same time it absorbs nitrate, with some other inert mineral substances from the soil, and takes these into its tissues. The starch formed in the chlorophyll is converted into soluble sugar, which circulates through the vessels of the plant and is associated with the nitrogenous salt in the elaboration of proteid. Proteid, oils, fats and resins, and to a greater extent carbohydrates, are thus built up by the plant and accumulate, for mechanical work is not done by it, nor is heat dissipated—or at least these processes occur to an insignificant extent.

are synthesised to—
proteid
fat
carbohydrate
Carbon dioxide
Water
Nitrate		Metabolism
of the green
plant
Chemical energy
at high potential.

Chemical energy at
low potential 

The “working substance” of our organic cycle has therefore returned to its original state.

We have considered the process of metabolism in two categories of organisms, the typical animal and the green plant, and we have combined these so as to obtain a picture of a reversible cycle of physico-chemical processes. When we speak of the “organism” in the most general sense, we mean that it exhibits these two modes of metabolism. This is, of course, not the case in any actual organism which we can investigate, or at least the typical modes of behaviour which characterise animal and plant life are not seen in any one individual. But we find that there is no absolute distinction between the two kingdoms. The plant may exhibit a mode of nutrition closely resembling that of the animal (as in the insectivorous plants), and it is possible that photo-synthetic process, in the general sense, may be present in the metabolism of some animals. Certain lower plants, the zoospores of algæ, exhibit movements identical in character with those of lower animals. At the base of both kingdoms are organisms, the Peridinians, for instance, which have much of the structure of the animal (though cellulose is present in their skeleton), which possess motile organs, but which also possess a photo-synthetic apparatus, and exhibit the typical plant mode of nutrition. Further, there are symbiotic partnerships, that is, associations of plant and animal in one “individual” form (as, for instance, among the lower worms, Echinoderms, polyzoa, molluscs, and other groups of animals). In these cases green algal cells, capable of forming starch from carbon dioxide and water under the influence of light, become intercalated among the tissues of the animal. We find, also, that with regard to some fundamental characters, plant and animal display close similarities: the structure of the cell, for example, and the highly special mode of conjugation of the germ-nuclei in sexual reproduction. We must regard all the distinctive characters of the plant as represented in the animal and vice versa. Why they have become specialised in different directions is a question that we discuss later.

The organism, then, in so far as we regard it as a physico-chemical mechanism, as the theatre of energetic happenings, exhibits the following general characters:—

(1) It slowly accumulates available energy in the form of chemical compounds of high potential, work being done upon it.

(2) It liberates this energy in relatively rapid, controlled, “explosive reactions,” transforming into movements carried out by a sensori-motor system of parts, work being done by it.

(3) In all these transformations the amount of energy which is dissipated is relatively small, and tends to vanish.

From the point of view, then, of energetic processes these are the characters of life, using the term in the general sense indicated above.[16]