Professor Czapek is not entirely consistent. He says that it is his
conviction that there is something in physiology that transcends the
chemistry and the physics of inorganic nature. At the same time he
affirms, "It becomes more and more improbable that Life develops forces
which are unknown in inanimate Nature." But psychic forces are a product
of life, and they certainly are not found in inanimate nature. But
without laying stress upon this fact, may we not say that if no new
force is developed by, or is characteristic of, life, certainly new
effects, new processes, new compounds of matter are produced by life?
Matter undergoes some change that chemical analysis does not reveal. The
mystery of isomeric substances appears, a vast number of new compounds
of carbon appear, the face of the earth changes. The appearance of life
in inert matter is a change analogous to the appearance of the mind of
man in animate nature. The old elements and forces are turned to new and
higher uses. Man does not add to the list of forces or elements in the
earth, but he develops them, and turns them to new purposes; they now
obey and serve him, just as the old chemistry and physics obey and
serve life. Czapek tells us of the vast number of what are called
enzymes, or ferments, that appear in living bodies--"never found in
inorganic Nature and not to be gained by chemical synthesis." Orders and
suborders of enzymes, they play a part in respiration, in digestion, in
assimilation. Some act on the fats, some on the carbohydrates, some
produce inversion, others dissolution and precipitation. These enzymes
are at once the products and the agents of life. They must exert force,
chemical force, or, shall we say, they transform chemical force into
life force, or, to use Professor Moore's term, into "biotic energy"?
III
The inorganic seems dreaming of the organic. Behold its dreams in the
fern and tree forms upon the window pane and upon the stone flagging of
a winter morning! In the Brunonian movement of matter in solution, in
crystallization, in chemical affinity, in polarity, in osmosis, in the
growth of flint or chert nodules, in limestone formations--like seeking
like--in these and in other activities, inert matter seems dreaming of
life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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