The principles of life were first produced by the action of the
sun's heat upon these vitalizing elements, setting them in motion,
generating the required force. The surrounding condition being
favorable, the simplest form of physiological life was produced. Once
under the influence of what may now be termed the principle of life,
in connection with which alone such phenomena are manifested, the
three or four simple constituents effected peculiar combinations,
giving rise to a few organizable elements--as they are termed,
because of them the organized fabric of the vegetable or animal
kingdom is built up. This fabric is in a good degree similar in all
living bodies; the solid parts, or tissues, in all assuming the form
of membranes, arranged so as to surround cavities, or form the walls
of tubes, in which fluids are contained. Such a structure is called
organized structure, and the bodies so composed are called organized
bodies, because such fabrics consist of parts coöperating with one
another as instruments or organs adapted to certain ends, and through
which alone the living principle, under whose influence the structure
itself was built up, is manifested in the operations which the animal
or plant carries on. There is in every organic fabric, a necessary
connection between its conformation and the action it is destined to
perform. This is equally true of the minute structure, or tissue,
as revealed by the microscope, and of the larger organs which the
tissues form in all plants and animals of the higher grades, such as
a leaf, a petal, or a tendril, a hand, an eye, or a muscle. The term
organization formerly referred to the possession of organs in this
larger sense, that is, of conspicuous parts or membranes. It is now
applied as well to the intimate structure of these parts, themselves
made up of smaller organs through which the vital forces directly act.
Protoplasm, called by Huxley the basis of physical life, is nothing
more than a homogeneous albuminous matter. An isolated albuminoid
is not living any more than an acid or a base equally isolated is a
chemically active body. But a mixture of two or several albuminous
substances (a protoplasm contains at least two) might be living,
similarly as a mixture of an acid and a base demonstrates the chemical
activity of the two bodies. But, whereas in the combination of an acid
and a base, the formation of a new body puts an end to the dynamic
manifestations of the mixture; the albuminous matter which by its
union gives birth to a protoplasm, that is to say, to living matter,
is capable of generating itself at the expense of the medium in which
it is placed, and in proportion to the dynamic manifestations which
it produces, gives birth to some rejected excreta in its midst.
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