Of the four chief elements which, in various combinations, make up living bodies, three are gaseous. While carbon is known only as a solid, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen habitually maintain the aeriform state. Only by intense pressures joined with extreme refrigerations have two out of the three (some say all) been reduced to the liquid form. There is a certain significance in this. When we remember how these re-distributions of Matter and Motion which constitutes Evolution, structural and functional, imply motions in the units that are re-distributed; we shall see a probable meaning in the fact that organic bodies, which exhibit the phenomena of evolution in so a high a degree, are mainly composed of ultimate units having extreme mobility.

Book Details