It is the creation of organic matter by art that the materialists have neglected to take into account. Therefore they look upon the organism just as a new race, suddenly succeeding humanity, would view our steam engines. These machines would certainly appear very mysterious to the earth’s new inhabitants. But a growing civilization would undoubtedly discover that all the material used in the engine is taken from ores to be found in nature. If now somebody would draw the conclusion that these ores themselves had made the engine he would reason as do the materialists today in regard to the organism. The parallel does not halt in any respect, but it is sufficient in this connection to call attention only to one or two of the more important components of the organism. Organic matter, or combustible substance, consists of carbon and hydrogen which in an organism are comparable to the iron in a steam engine. But nowhere in nature is free hydrogen or free inorganic carbon to be found. The carbon was burned to carbonic acid in earth’s first combustion, and similarly the hydrogen was burned to water long before the conditions for organic life existed on the earth. From these original products of combustion, burnable organic matter is formed by decomposition of carbonic acid and water into their elements, carbon and hydrogen, and by their subsequent combination through feebler chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc., which substances through a new combustion are again turned into carbonic acid and water. The natural forces cannot spontaneously undertake these transformations that only take place because of artificial arrangements. The processes of nature go in the entirely opposite direction, as we have seen. As a matter of fact, the reduction of carbonic acid and water is done through the direct assistance of living beings. From the sun they take their power. But how ineffective the sun would be, left to itself, is seen already by the fact that carbonic acid is disintegrated at a temperature of 1300° C. and water only at 1500°. Products of art must be resorted to, and we know that by lenses, burning mirrors, photographic cameras and the like the sun may be forced to accomplish results that otherwise would be impossible. Such artificial apparatus, then, must be the chlorophyll granules in the cells. More strikingly yet, these organs of the cell may be compared to our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the chlorophyll granules that the reduction of carbonic acid and water, according to science, takes place. If these artificial devices, invented and constructed by the lower living units that constitute the cell, did not exist, the sun might shine throughout eternity on water and carbonic acid without producing organic building material.