responsible for all the
protean manifestations of life, wonderful as radium and its doings are,
they must sink into nothingness beside those of this new and unsuspected
entity. The author evidently does not think that this path is a
profitable one to pursue, and we agree with him; so he turns his
attention to the question of energy. Energy is the capacity for doing
work. It is often, of course, latent, as, for example, in a cordite
cartridge, which is a peaceful, harmless thing until the energy stored
up in it is realised with the accompanying explosion and work is done.
It is the same with a bent spring; a clock-weight when the clock is not
going, and so on.

We need not develop this matter further; but one point must be alluded
to, namely, the gradual exhaustion of the available energy in the
changes from one manifestation to another. In all physical processes
heat is evolved, which heat is distributed by conduction and radiation
and tends to become universally diffused throughout space. When complete
uniformity has been attained, all physical phenomena will come to an
end; in other words, our solar system must come to an end, and it must
have had a beginning. It is a well-known argument. Is there anything to
rewind the clock which is running down before our very eyes? It was once
urged that stellar collisions, and such-like things, might permit us to
postulate a cyclical arrangement (and thus rearrangement) of universal
phenomena; but that hypothesis does not seem to find any supporters
to-day.

In his interesting book, already mentioned, Dr. Johnstone called
attention to the power possessed by living matter of reversing the
process; but no reversal of this kind and extent can make up for the
constant degradation of energy which is taking place all round us. We
mention this because it shows that "energy" cannot, in any case, afford
an eternal solution, but only a temporal and therefore a limited one. No
one doubts that there is energy in the living thing, nor that there are
what the author calls "complexes of energies." No one, again, will
quarrel with the statement that energy is first seen in the sun, in the
earth, in the air, and in the water; that "with life something new
appears in the universe, namely, a union of the internal and external
adjustment of energy which we appropriately call an _Organism_." That
"the germ is an energy complex" is no doubt an unproved hypothesis, as
he admits, but is quite likely.