such phenomena arise in phases of life developed under conditions
of external constraint, as will be urged more fully further on,
and that in fact the special conditions of old age do not and
cannot express the true law and tendency of the dynamic relations
of life in the face of its evident advance upon the Earth. The
law of the unconstrained cell is growth on an ever increasing
scale; and although we assume the organic configuration, whether
somatic or reproductive, to be essentially unstable, so that
continual inflow of energy is required merely to keep it in
existence, this does not vitiate the fact that, when free of all
external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the
case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the
phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning
power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable
of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena
that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and
yet its law be suspended; but as if they represented a
degradation of the very conditions of life, a break up, under the
laws of the inanimate, of the animate contrivance; so that energy
is no longer available to it, or the primary condition, "the
transfer of energy into the animate system," is imperfectly
obeyed. It is to the perfect contrivance of life our statement
refers.
That the final end of all will be general non-availability there
seems little reason to doubt, and the organism, itself dependent
upon differences of potential, cannot
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hope to carry on aggregation of energy beyond the period when
differences of potential are not. The organism is not accountable
for this. It is being affected by events external to it, by the
actions going on through inanimate agents. And although there be
only a part of the received energy preserved, there is a part
preserved, and this amount is continually on the increase. To see
this it is only necessary to reflect that the sum of animate
energy—capability of doing work in any way through animate
means—at present upon the Earth, is the result, although a small
one, of energy reaching the Earth since a remote period, and
which otherwise had been dissipated in space. In inanimate
actions throughout nature, as we know it, the availability is
continually diminishing. The change is all the one way. As,
however, the supply of available energy in the universe is
(probably) limited in amount, we must look upon the two as simply
effecting the final dissipation of potential in very different
ways. The animate system is aggressive on the energy available to
it, spends with economy, and invests at interest till death
finally deprives it of all. It has heirs, indeed, who inherit
some of its gains, but they, too, must die, and ultimately there
will be no successors, and the greater part must melt away as if
it had never been. The inanimate system responds to the forces
imposed upon it by sluggish changes; of that which is thrust upon
it, it squanders uselessly. The path of the energy is very
different in the two cases.
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While it is true generally that both systems ultimately result in
the dissipation of energy to uniform potential, the organism can,
as we have seen, under particular circumstances evade the final
doom altogether. It can lay up a store of potential energy which
may be permanent. Thus, so long as there is free oxygen in the
universe, our coalfields might, at any time in the remote future,
generate light and heat in the universal grave.
It is necessary to observe on the fundamental distinction between
the growth of the protoplasm and the growth of the crystal. It is
common to draw comparison between the two, and to point to
metabolism as the chief distinction. But while this is the most
obvious distinction the more fundamental one remains in the
energy relations of the two with the environment.[1] The growth
of the crystal is the result of loss of energy; that of the
organism the result of gain of energy. The crystal represents a
last position of stable equilibrium assumed by molecules upon a
certain loss of kinetic energy, and the formation of the crystal
by evaporation and concentration of a liquid does not, in its
dynamic aspect, differ much from the precipitation of an
amorphous sediment. The organism, on the other hand, represents a
more or less unstable condition formed and maintained by inflow
of energy; its formation, indeed, often attended with a loss of
kinetic energy (fixation of carbon in plants), but, if so,
accompanied by
[1] It appears exceptional for the crystal line configuration to
stand higher in the scale of energy than the amorphous.
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a more than compensatory increase of potential molecular energy.