In the Beginning: An Interpretation of Sunlight Energy

All things flow,

— HERACLITUS

I

THIS account of my simple views on Life and its origins in terms of Energy will be intelligible to those who have the most rudimentary acquaintance with Chemistry and Physics. If they are also lovers of nature or gardens, and endowed with scientific curiosity, this essay will give them a fresh and simpler outlook on living things; so that even such common objects as tree-buds and leaves, weeds and rust, clouds and rivers, will acquire a new and fascinating interest and relationship.

My own mind was set wondering about these things by noticing that, in a photograph of a landscape, the vegetation appears on the whole much darker than the background of rock or soil. This contrast is specially noticeable when the soil is of the tawny color of a recent volcano, such as the Peak of Teneriffe. Soil of this color would probably predominate in our earth, when it had cooled sufficiently for Life to originate.

This contrast shows that the lightenergy of the sun has been absorbed and degraded to a greater extent than would have occurred if vegetation had never been invented. This raises certain questions:—Were plants evolved for the ‘ purpose ’ of degrading the energy of sunshine? Are plants the elaborately evolved manifestations or materializations of the law of degradation of energy? Has energy carved these elaborate organized channels to conduct its energy downhill, in the same way that the energy of water falling on a watershed has carved the beds of the rivers? These are some of the questions we shall inquire into; and although they seemed to me wild and improbable at first, they do not seem so now.

II

First, what do we mean by Energy. It is defined as ‘the capacity to do work’; but in reality we do not know what it is. Some think that matter may be a manifestation of energy. At any rate, energy has now been measured in units, or quanta, so presumably we may regard it as an entity and not as a mere state of matter.

Energy exists in a flowing river (kinetic energy), or when it is dammed up (potential energy). Food and fuel are full of potential energy. Sunshine is the source of practically all the energy on the earth.

I shall constantly have to use two new words, Katergy and Anergy. For the comprehension of this paper it is essential to remember their meaning — briefly, downflow and upflow of Energy.

By Katergy (Kata-energy) I mean ‘ the flow of energy to a lower potential or level,’whatever the kind of energy may be. When Katergy occurs, work is done, heat is produced, and the energy becomes less available.

By Anergy (Ana-energy) I mean ‘the flow of energy to a higher potential,’ regardless of what kind of energy it is.

Katergy always occurs when possible. Hence Anergy never occurs unless, as an episode in Katergy, part of the energy is compelled to flow ‘uphill’ by some device such as chlorophyll. These terms should be of real service to biologists, because the leaves of plants, when they absorb and katergize the energy of sunlight, simultaneously anergize a part of it into the chemical potential energy of their seeds, leaves, and wood. Thus they make energy more available, in apparent contradiction of the law of degradation of energy, which I will shortly explain.

Plants, from the energy point of view, are evolved protoplasmic mechanisms, which trap and katergize the energy of sunlight, converting part of it by the anergic agency of their green coloring matter (chlorophyll) into the chemical potential energy of starch, and so forth. Out of this is built up the rest of the growing plant. No energy is absorbed by the roots of a plant — only water, and a few simple salts which are, however, indispensable.

Animals, from the aspect of energy, may be grouped with fungi and bacteria as being protoplasmic mechanisms which carry out the degradation of the chemical potential energy that has been stored in the bodies of plants or other animals.

Thus animals, when full-grown, are mostly katergizers of food; whereas plants are simultaneously katergizers of sunlight and anergizers of food. Hence we estimate the vitality of an animal chiefly by its activities (katergy), and of a plant chiefly by its growth (anergy).

Law of Degradation of Energy (Law of Katergy). — This states that energy is constantly tending to flow to a lower potential, whereby it turns itself into lower and less available forms of energy, and eventually into low-temperature heat.

The word ‘tend’ seems misleadingly weak to express the driving force, or motive-power, or ‘go,’inherent in this great law of Energy. Hence I shall often use the less scientific and less cautious expression, ‘straining’ of energy to flow to a lower potential. Thus, when energy is in the potential form, it certainly seems to strain to flow; for an apple strains on its stalk, and the electricity of a thundercloud must strain violently to flow before the great lightning discharge bursts through the resistances that bound it. Iron tends to rust; flame tends to burn; no opportunity of katergy is ever missed.

Wherever we look around us we can see this obvious tendency or tugging of energy to flow downhill to a lower potential level.

It is the driving force or motivepower inherent in this law of degradation of energy, and manifested in the above great group of phenomena, that I would make the foundation of my paper. It is almost impossible to express this tendency, or ‘go,’in words which will not offend some physicist or other; but if I merely transplant the tendency or straining toward katergy manifested in this immense group of phenomena, and apply it to Life and its origins, it seems to me that we shall be on sure ground — even if our present knowledge, or my way of wording it, is at fault.

This law of Degradation of Energy seems to me to stand alone among the laws of energy in connoting a driving force, which is the motive-power of Astronomy, Chemistry, and Physics. I submit that it is the driving force of Life, too, and that it brought living things gradually into being. A driving force is badly needed by biologists to apply to Life; and it is quite lacking in Newton’s three laws of Motion, which were adapted to Astronomy.

III

The laws of Energy, for biological purposes, can be grouped, I think, under these three heads: —

1. The Law of Metergy — that energy can be changed from one form into an equivalent amount of another form, but cannot be created or destroyed.

This covers the various transformations of energy, such as light, heat, motion, sound, electrical, chemical, osmotic, and surface energy, which occur kaleidoscopically in living things.

2. The Law of Katergy — that energy tends constantly to degrade itself into less available forms of lower potential, and eventually into low-temperature heat. We can now express this as, ‘Katergy tends insistently to occur.’

How or why this happens is a mystery. It is just an attribute of the mysterious thing which we call energy. When iron can burn, it will do so; if not, it will katergize much more slowly by rusting. The shortest, steepest ‘ladder’ downhill will be taken.

Katergy transformers, such as spongy platinum or the digestive ferments, often assist by providing the necessary ‘ladder’ downward. Thus it is easy for iron to oxidize in the air into rust, with the help of a trace of water, but very difficult without its help as a katergy transformer.

Some ancient forms of bacteria live in sulphur springs. They grow and get their energy by oxidizing sulphuretted hydrogen, which is their food. Doubtless, the katergy of sulphuretted hydrogen is accomplished much more quickly with their aid than without it.

Katergy cannot be expected to show prescience. Energy merely takes always the first chance of katergy, even if it leads a ray of light-energy to be absorbed by a plant, and is largely converted into starch, and perhaps has its stored-up energy buried for ages in a seam of coal.

3. The Law of Ana-katergy — ‘Katergy may encounter an anergy transformer which compels part of it to flow simultaneously to a higher potential.’

This combined simultaneous process is Ana-katergy, and the greatest example of it is the green leaf, which katergizes sunlight, but at the same time — by the agency of chlorophyll — anergizes part of the light-energy into the chemical energy of starch.

It will be noticed that only a part of the katergy is converted into anergy, that is, only a part of the downflow of energy is diverted into upflow. So that ana-katergy is like katergy with a bit bitten out of it. Since we know already that katergy tends always to occur, ana-katergy will also tend always to occur, though presumably less forcefully by reason of the bit bitten out of it. Hence we may complete the Law of Ana-katergy by stating that ‘Katergy, minus the anergy imposed on it, tends to be maximal,’ or K—A tends to be maximal, though this is not intended to be a strict mathematical statement.

But obviously, if A was equal to K, there would be no flow of energy; and if A exceeded K, the law of conservation of energy would be broken. Also, A should act as a brake on the downward tendency of K; but, as we are dealing with the action of very minute lightwaves on minute molecules, we cannot follow the process in a detailed manner

The efficiency of a leaf, that is, the proportion of the light energy which is changed into chemical energy (starch, and so forth) by ana-katergy, has been measured, but the results so far are variable.

From the fact that beech leaves have been found fossilized in the chalk, I conclude that leaves have long ago attained all practicable perfection, and that present evolution and adaptation are responses to variations in environment.

Although the Law of Ana-katergy is of necessity only a special case, or sublaw, of the Law of Katergy, its results are so far-reaching and so upsetting to the ordinary laws of energy, that I feel sure it should be stated as a separate law, for the sake of clear thinking in Biology. In Physics (except Meteorology) it seems of little use. It is the great law of sunshine and plants, clouds and wind, and all that these imply for us. Food and fuel, rain and rivers, are its products.

IV

As this conception of ana-katergy has not been formulated before, I must give three instances of it — a mechanical, a physical, and a chemical instance.

1. The hydraulic ram. — This is a simple arrangement of valves and pipes, which may be heard in lonely valleys giving vent to loud mysterious thumps like the beatings of a great metallic heart. A large pipe, led from a stream, is the source of katergy. A small pipe leads from the apparatus to a cistern of a country-house high above the valley. Thus, without fuel or human regulation, the potential energy of the water in the stream is prevented from total katergy and a portion of it is automatically turned into anergy. The combined simultaneous process is anakatergy.

2. A physical instance of ana-katergy. — When the sun shines on the sea, the water surface is warmed and turned into an invisible vapor, which happens fortunately to be lighter than air. This ascends, and condenses in the cool upper air into a cloud of droplets of water, which has thus been raised against the force of gravity and thereby been given potential energy. That is to say, anergy has occurred in a process of katergy; the energy of sunlight has been degraded, but, by help of a device, part of it has been simultaneously turned into anergy. What is the device? Clearly the warmed water molecules which, being lighter than air, act like little fire-balloons. They diffuse into the surrounding warmed air and rise en masse in the heavier air, at first as invisible moist air, and later, when cooled, as a visible cloud of water droplets.

If we imagine that liquid water was brown in color and its vapor purple, as it is in the case of iodine, this constant purple ascension of water and brown descent of rain from purple-brown clouds would have been a very striking and almost concrete phenomenon. It would have seemed to us almost ’living,’ much in the same way that flame does. But flame is pure katergy; the sun-cloud phenomenon is an anergic mechanism actuated by sunshine — just as, in my opinion, a plant is. Hence, from the aspect of Energetics, the cloud is the exact physical analogue of the chemical plant. And the watermolecule fire-balloon is the physical analogue of the chemical chlorophyll; they are both anergy transformers.

Further, it has hitherto been considered that plants, in some mysterious way peculiar to living things, reverse the ordinary law that energy tends always to degrade itself to a lower potential. This they apparently do (in one sense) when they form food and fuel. But this is no peculiarity of living things as we have just seen in the analogous sun-cloud phenomenon. It is strange how this appears to have been overlooked. Lord Kelvin expressly excepted living things from the law of degradation of energy; but, so far as I know, made no exception of clouds. When the three conceptions — anergy and katergy and anergy-transformers — are crystallized into three words, no confusion is possible.

3. I shall now describe a delightful recently discovered chemical instance of ana-katergy, which has proved most useful in supporting my thesis. Professor Moore exposed to sunlight a soup-plate of water, containing sodium nitrate (1 in 10,000). After two hours, he found by test-papers that t he nitrate had been turned into nitrite, which contains 21,000 more units of potential energy per gram-molecule than the nitrate. This energy had been put into it by the sunlight. If we were a billion times smaller, we should be able to see the terrific light-waves breaking on the quivering nitrate molecule. We should see the molecule and its revolving atoms shaken so violently that an atom of oxygen would be detached from the molecule, which t hereby would be converted into nitrite. Meanwhile, the light-wave passes on with diminished amplitude and lessened energy. It has been katergized, but the obliging nitrate molecule has served as a device compelling a simultaneous formation of chemical anergy. Moreover, the nitrite molecule is an unstable one, and will slowly oxidize back into nitrate — perhaps in a single night.

Hence we see that the nitrate molecule behaves exactly like a minute plant, in that it katergizes sunlight, with the simultaneous transformation of part of the energy into chemical anergy. Further, it liberates oxygen in the light, and absorbs oxygen in the dark, by a miniature respiration — just like a plant. Or, the nitrate molecule may be regarded as analogous to chlorophyll, because they are both anergy transformers of sunlight, converting deenergized chemical bodies into energized compounds — nitrites or starch, respectively.

If, at the dawn of life, a nitrate were associated with a pigmented slimy carbohydrate colloid, to give substance and coherence and an opportunity of growth, and to take advantage by coupled reactions of the chemical energy of the nitrite formed by sunlight, then we should begin to see possibilities of a primitive attempt at vegetable life.

Since writing this, the fundamental importance which I attached to this nitrate experiment has been confirmed by some remarkable experiments by Professor Baly and his coworkers at Liverpool (1922).

It was already known that sunlight could very slowly turn carbonic acid into sugar (via formaldehyde). Baly found that, if potassium nitrate was present, this sugar formation was very rapid, and that complex alkaloids were also formed, and — still more wonderful — that even proteids were produced. In other words, these complex ‘organic’ chemical bodies, which hitherto had been regarded as marvelous achievements, possible only to the living cell, were formed automatically, when sunlight acted on carbonic acid and a nitrate.

These experiments (when confirmed) seem to me of enormous importance in five directions, at least: —

1. They obliterate the distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry.

2. They remove a whole block of difficulties in our attempts to explain Life and its origins by laws already known.

3. They indicate that complex ‘organic’ carbon compounds must have been present in the sea long before the origin of Life, which is thereby easier to imagine.

4. They are instances of growth, though without form or visibility or coherence.

5. These highly anergized chemical bodies (soluble carbohydrates and proteids) would be excellent foods. Since sea-water contains carbonates and nitrates, these invisible chemical foods would presumably be formed when the sun shines on the sea. The ultimate plankton of the sea could feed on this dissolved food — a supposition which makes the cilia of these minute creatures far more intelligi. ble than if we regard the cilia as wafters of solid particles only. This should be verified experimentally.

V

In explaining my ideas to friends and critics, the greatest difficulty has been their insistence that plants and living things reverse the ordinary law of degradation of energy; whereas I maintain they obey the laws of physics, and act as we have just seen the nitrate and water molecules doing.

My friends are more impressed by the food and fuel which plants produce in apparent contradiction of the law of katergy, than by the much larger amount of sunshine energy which was katergized when the food or fuel was anergized.

Hence I must try to make this simultaneous anergy and katergy clear by an analogy.

Imagine big waves breaking on an island girt with low cliffs. Shingle will be thrown up by the waves on to the clifftops. The cliffs have katergized the energy of the waves, and by acting as inclined-plane-and-shelf, they have simultaneously trapped the anergy given to the shingle by the wave when it lifted the shingle against the force of gravity. Nearly all the energy of the wave has been katergized into heat of low temperature; but a fraction has been anergized as the potential energy of the shingle. It is an instance of anakatergy, just as the waves of sunlight falling on a leaf are katergized and simultaneously partly anergized into the chemical potential energy of starch. In both cases, the combined effect is a degradation of energy, and no laws are broken.

If our island were inhabited by imaginary shortsighted creatures, who could not climb down the cliffs and whose food was shingle, they would conclude erroneously, as some men do, that the laws of physics had been specially reversed for their benefit, in that the shingle had fallen up, instead of falling down as it should do.

Moreover, the shingle-heaps on the cliff top would gradually accumulate. This illustrates growth by ana-katergy.

And in some places the slope of the cliff would be better adapted for anergizing shingle than in others. In these places the shingle-heaps would grow quicker and overgrow the neighboring heaps. This illustrates survival of the fittest individuals, and shows that it is the best ana-katergizers which survive; that is, the shingle-heap survives by supplanting its competitors, because it is the product of the bit of cliff which receives the most waves, which traps and katergizes their energy best, and which acts best as an anergy transformer — which, in short, is the best anakatergizer. And at the end of my thesis I shall submit that, for precisely similar reasons, it is the best ana-katergizers which survive among plants in the apparent struggle for existence.

Animals, on the other hand, with fungi and bacteria, are, broadly speaking, katergizers of the chemical energy of food. In these it is the fittest katergizers which will survive.

There is a third class of living things, where plant and animal live in partnership — the symbiotic creatures, such as the green amœba. A colony of these microscopic jelly-fishes has been known to live for ten years without food. That is possible, because the plant-partner traps light energy, and thereby anergizes carbonic acid and nitrates into starch and proteid, on which the animal feeds. The animal partner katergizes this food back again into deenergized carbon and nitrogen, which serves again as raw material for the plant-partner.

The energy changes in this cycle can be illustrated by the following mechanistic analogy. Imagine a sort of knitting-machine, driven (like a plant) by sunlight energy, which knits up beautiful fabrics out of raw material consisting of straight steely filaments like the hair-springs of a watch. The fabric will be full of energy because the filaments composing it are full of bends. Hence another (animal-like) machine can be driven by the energy unlocked when the fabric is unraveled, just as a caterpillar can feed on the energy contained in a leaf.

If we were to put the two machines together in series, we should have a picture of a symbiotic creature. We should then see, not any fabric formation, but merely the straight filaments — the raw material — entering and leaving the combined machines.

This brings home to us that the plants and animals supply each other with the necessary raw materials, and that the plant-animal cycle begins and ends with deënergized carbon and nitrogen. The only thing that flows is the stream of energy, starting with sunlight and ending with low-temperature heat. The laws of Katergy and Ana-katergy provide the driving force throughout the cycle.

‘All things flow,’said Heraclitus of old. Was there ever so much truth and prophecy compressed into two Greek words?

VI

Let us now test our Law of Anakatergy by asking it to solve the problem why weeds supplant the more useful or beautiful garden plants in a neglected garden. First, we must compare the individual plant with a business man owning a factory. Any money (energy) he puts into his factory (leaves) is productive; but his advertising department (flowers) is only indirectly productive and must not be overdone. Similarly, he must not spend an unreasonable amount on cradles and baby-clothes (large fruits) for his enormous family. This money must be put into the factory; for otherwise his competitors will supplant him. This makes it clear that the garden plants, with their large redundant fruits or numerous double flowers (all unproductive anergy), cannot compete with the weeds, which seem to reduce their flowers and fruit to the bare minimum needed to advertise to the insects, and to bribe the birds to distribute their seeds.

Our Law of Ana-katergy states that katergy minus anergy (K—A) tends to be maximal. K is bigger for the weeds, because they grow quicker and put their anergy into leaves. A is smaller for the weeds, because their unproductive anergy (flowers and fruit) is minimal.

Hence on both counts K—A is ‘ more maximal’ for the weeds than for the garden plants. The weeds triumph because they carry out better the Law of Ana-katergy; they provide a steeper wider channel for energy to flow down.

Hitherto the explanation of the triumph of weeds has been merely that they are more hardy. The Law of Anakatergy has provided a much neater and more satisfying explanation, and has strengthened itself thereby.

This could be tested experimentally by allowing wild oats, for example, to compete with cultivated oats for two or three seasons, on equal terms. The anergy in each case for a given katergy could also be measured and compared.

The assumption that deciduous trees in winter do not attempt to katergize sunshine energy does not seem to be correct. For in December I found that in all the common trees, if the thin translucent brownish cuticle were stripped off, there was a layer of pale green chlorophyll beneath. Hence all these twigs had on a small scale the apparatus of photosynthesis (growth by sunlight).

Further, there is far more energy in the infra-red rays of sunshine than in its visible spectrum, but in the heat of summer the tree dare not or need not absorb these heat-rays. In winter, the very dark color of the twigs and their velvety light-trapping effect when massed in a bush or wood, certainly absorb nearly all the visible rays, and doubtless these dark heat-rays too.

Hence English woods and bushes in winter are very effective katergizers of solar heat and light.

What do they do with this absorbed energy? They do not seem to grow. Here the point of view of my thesis suggests a fascinating question.

In Southern France, the twigs in December seemed to me much paler than in England, presumably because the need lor heat is less and its danger greater.

I he buds on a tree or bush may be regarded as separate individuals, just as the polyps on a coral may (Darwin). There is a natural selection going on among their buds, but it seems to me not to be a survival of the fittest, for every bud has the same sap and constitution and heredity, and may be regarded as potentially almost equal in fitness to survive. The buds that survive seem to be those which find themselves with the best chance of katergizing sunlight and the least chance of cold winds or other unfavorable factors. These buds will leave descendants (twigs) ready for next year. The buds that point in an unfavorable direction languish or die. Similarly with larger twigs or branches.

The summated effects of this simple principle of survival of the best-lit buds is to render the total panoply of the leaves of a tree a very perfect trap for sunshine, which could hardly be improved upon by design.

Now is it not queer and suspicious to find ourselves with one law for the tree and another for its buds — that the survivors are the fittest, trees and the ‘littest’ buds?

Can we reconcile this? We can, by staling that the trees or buds which survive are, not the fittest or fittest, but the best ana-katergizers of sunshine. And that is my main hypothesis; it is supported by the reconciliation it effects in this case.

Further, it is not really a case of competition or struggle between buds (or plants). It is merely that energy flows (with consequent anergy and growth) through channels or mechanisms which provide the fullest opportunity of ana-katergy for it. This view relieves us of the unpleasant necessity, unavoidable in the old view, of considering that the gentle plants deliberately stifle and murder each other. But the effect is the same: the inferior katergizers die because insufficient energy flows through them.

There is a strong tendency for variegated shrubs to revert to the allgreen condition; so that gardeners have frequently to pick off the all-green shoots. Why is this? Clearly because the white part of the leaves, which contains no chlorophyll, carries out the law of ana-katergy far worse than the green leaves. It is a survival of the best ana-katergizers. In my garden is a variegated maple which has now become almost entirely green.

VII

Let us now consider rivers, for they have helped me very much in elucidating this katergic hypothesis of Life. When in doubt, I have always asked the river. River-systems seem wonderfully adapted to achieve the katergy of the water falling on the watershed. Each tributary is adapted in width and depth to the amount of water it has to carry.

The course of each stream seems designed to achieve katergy in the best and most direct and economical way possible. Thus the streams cross all contour lines at right angles. Hence the river-system seems made for the katergy of water. In truth, we know that rivers are made by the katergy of water, and hence the ‘adaptation’ and ‘design’ are only apparent.

A river-system is a beautiful materialization of the straining to degrade of one form of energy in one sort of environment. So is a plant or animal. Electricity, heat, and atmospheric air, when flowing from high to low potential, carve for themselves river-beds. But these are either invisible, as in heat-flow or winds, or strictly temporary as in lightning. Although lightning leaves no permanent ‘river-beds’ after carving its sinuous branching path of incandescent air, yet when it strikes into a sandy soil, it leaves a permanent river-bed in the form of beautiful branching tubes of fused silica, two to three inches in diameter, penetrating thirty feet or more into the earth.

But to return to river-systems. We must not consider them alone, but as part of an energy-cycle. The sun causes the water-molecule fire-balloons, acting as anergy transformers, to rise and turn into clouds in the condenser of the upper air. The rain falls from these, and creates the river-system which carves its course of katergy to the sea and completes the cycle. In this physical cycle we discern a wonderfully complete analogy to the chemical sun-chlorophyll-plant-animal cycle.

Iti both cases the katergy of sunshine is the driving force. Anergy is compelled by the water-molecule fireballoon, or by chlorophyll. The anergized product is a cloud or a plant. This stored-up energy is fed upon by a river or by an animal.

The sun-cloud system and river-sea system provide the raw materials for each other. For if water accumulated entirely as cloud or entirely as sea, the cycle would cease.

Similarly the sun-plant system and theanimal-to-carbonic-acid system provide the raw materials for each other. Without this, the plants would stop for want of carbonic acid, and the animals for want of food-energy.

But the river-cloud system remains just the same as when it started — when the earth became cool enough for water to liquefy. It is not capable of evolution, only of repetition. Why is this? Because there is only one best way of anergizing a cloud and katergizing rain on the earth’s irregular surface. And that one best way is the way the river does it. This does not permit of competition, or of evolution, save in the limited sense that energy improves its katergy by gradually lowering the river-bed and decreasing its resistance.

On the other hand, at the time when the primeval rivers had cooled a little, it is inevitable that these busy insistent laws of katergy should start working on very different materials, namely, the carbon compounds; and these would be capable of evolution.

This brings us to the consideration of the Dawn of Life.

VIII

It is clear to my mind that the only law of energy in which any ‘go’ or driving force is inherent is the Law of Katergy (and its Sub-law of Anakatergy). It provides the driving force of Physics, Chemistry, and Astronomy; why not of Life, too? It expresses a positive command — ‘Energy shall always degrade.’ This involves an eternal procession of changes and determines the direction of these changes. That is the kind of law needed to initiate Life, and which will do so, I think, if it finds sufficiently plastic material to act upon, — such as the carbon compounds, — and a continual stream of energy, — such as sunshine, — and a suitable ancrgy transformer.

The other laws of energy seem to me to be merely regulating laws,¹ and not to be of direct interest to biologists.

If we accept the laws of Katergy and Ana-katergy as the driving forces of animal and vegetable life, respectively, then a vital force becomes unnecessary, and the innumerable mysteries of living things resolve themselves into mysteries of regulating devices. In the same way, a man may be hopelessly puzzled by the works of clocks, but he has learned their chief secret when he has discovered that, in every sort of clock, the driving force is the straining of katergy.

In speculations on the origin of Life, besides (1) the essential driving force, there must be (2) a source of energy, (3) suitable plastic raw material for this energy to knit up, (4) an anergy transformer, and (5) a means of renewing the raw material, which is attained most simply by an unraveling device.

These five cardinal roles can be adequately filled, I submit, by (1) the two laws of katergy, (2) sunshine, (3) and (4) carbonic acid and nitrates, and (5) bacteria, or simplest animals, or even enzymes. These last need not develop till all the raw material has been knitted up; or, more probably, a symbiotic mechanism would knit up and unravel simultaneously in the earlier humbler instances of life.

I submit that living things are the actual evolved manifestations of this tendency (or straining?) of energy to katergize, in the same way that flame, or rather incandescence, is the only manifestation of life on the sun. On a cold world of iron in an atmosphere of oxygen, rust would be the only manifestation of life. But the raw materials would quickly be exhausted, unless we imagine sunlight to have the power of deoxidizing iron. Then only would you get a simple life-cycle, but it would be incapable of further evolution.

Flame is a rapid high-temperature oxidation, and is a far more rapid katergizer than animals are. Hence flame triumphs over animals when it gets a chance of katergizing foodstuffs. But fortunately flame is very poorly provided with means of reproducing itself, save by direct continuity, or it would entirely supplant animals on the land.

In considering Life and its origins on this earth, the first thing to remember is that all raw materials would soon be katergized unless anergized again by energy from the sun. It is the inexhaustible river of sunshine energy we have to consider — always tending to flow downhill, or katergize. But it cannot do so unless it acts on matter. Some forms of matter absorb sunshine, and give it the chance of katergy by vibrating and turning it into heat. If the earth and waters had been dead black, there would possibly have been nothing more. However, the seas and primitive earth (specially where it was of the pale tawny color of much volcanic soil) would reflect a large amount of sunshine. Now reflection means a refusal of matter to permit the katergy of light. The law of katergy would be always opposing this, and seeking to evade it. When the earth had cooled enough to allow the seas to form, and the dense pall of cloud had condensed sufficiently for the sun to shine upon the sea, then we must picture sunlight as testing all sorts of matter, specially in the waters, where Life must have originated.

The sea would have been then, as it: is now, a dilute solution of all soluble chemical compounds on the earth. The probing sunshine would strike black objects, and be katergized into lowtemperature heat, and be content. It would strike pale objects, or strike things glancingly, and be reflected into space with its yearnings for katergy unsatisfied.

But we must focus our attention on the sunlight which fell on anergy transformers, such as the nitrates, which would have been present in sea-water in company with carbonic acid (or its carbonates).

From Baly’s experiments it seems inevitable that on the surface of the seas every nitrate molecule would be a little focus for the rapid formation from carbonates, of proteins, alkaloids, and hexose sugar. At any rate, nitrites would be formed, and the light-energy during its katergy would be partly anergized into chemical potential energy, which could be utilized to form higher chemical compounds by the wellknown ‘coupled reactions ’ of chemistry. It is urgently necessary that sea-water should be filtered aseptically through porcelain, and tested to see if these complex organic compounds form in sunlight. In ordinary sea-water of the present day, these compounds would be absent, because the smallest animals would katergize them as their food. At any rate, it seems clear that organic chemical compounds of carbon and nitrogen, and so forth, long preceded life. Carbon compounds have the unique property of combining in long chains (or rings), and so producing an endless variety of chemical and physical property, which would be available to provide sunlight with better and better opportunities of katergy. Many of these compounds would be colloids — gelatinous or slimy bodies with their molecules aggregated into great, groups.

Now colloids, even simple ones like hydrate of iron, may act as photocatalysts, that is, assist in converting sunlight energy into chemical energy. Still more important, they might absorb nitrates and carbonates, and so provide the physical basis for the astonishing chemical changes which occur when sunlight falls on the combination. In some such way growth, which, as we have seen, has already occurred chemically, might or would occur physically, in the form of a slime growing by the ana-katergy of sunshine falling on such anergy transformers as nitrates and colloids. This would occur, not only in one way, but in many crude and various ways and places — each giving rise to a different kind of slowly growing slime. The slime which anergized best the katergy of the stream of sunlight of its environment would grow quickest, and would overgrow physically its neighboring competing slimes. The fittest slimes would survive, and we can now see plainly that the fittest are the best ana-katergizers of sunlight — that is, those which have absorbed and katergized the maximal proportion of the sunlight of their environment, and have anergized the greatest proportion of this katcrgy into the anergy of chemical compounds, enabling growth to take place.

Furthermore, we see plainly in these hypothetical elementary instances of early life that the struggle for existence between two slimes is not real, but only apparent. Actually, the better slime permits better the katergy of the available sunlight; it acts as a better organized evolved channel for the conduction of sunlight in the direction of katergy. That sort of slime is thereby enriched with energy; and the more efficient is its anergy-transformer, the quicker it will grow and thereby trap more sunshine.

Chlorophyll and the chloroplast are probably elaborately evolved improvements on simple anergy transformers, such as the nitrate molecule.

We have traced in imagination the formation of the first growing slimes. It would be a disadvantage if they grew too big. However, the waves would knock bits off them, thereby increasing the indispensable surface-area. Each little fragment, by surface tension, would assume a spherical form. Thus, in the great genealogical Tree of Life, the inorganic roots have now converged, to form the organic trunk. But we can see that the trunk must have been exceedingly multiple.

IX

In this way an utterly new kind of evolution would have been initiated. So far it had been all katergy (except cloud-formation) — all mere devolution. Now, a new upward process of competitive evolution had arisen by the action of light on anergy-transformers with growth and ‘competition.’

Where would it end? It must have started soon after water assumed the liquid form, and have continued until now. Every environment would have evolved a different and appropriate ana-katergizer. The evolved products after that inconceivable time must have become unimaginably perfect and complex and varied. All partial successes would have become extinct, and all early attempts would have been unfossil izable.

Where are these products? It seems to me inconceivable, in view of all the possibilities I have outlined, that these two busy insistent lawsof katergy should have produced no evolved products in all these ages. Where are these products? They must be somewhere. Nowhere else but in the lovely and lovable plants and animals of to-day.

The Dawn of Life would have consisted in sunlight finding by evolution better and better means of ana-katergy — at first inorganic, then insensibly becoming organic. In consequence, reflection of sunlight from the earth’s surface would get less and less. The camera shows that it is now very slight where vegetation is thickest. As a result, the earth, when viewed from the sun, must surely reflect much less light than the moon, which has no vegetation. It is suggestive of some form of vegetation on Mars, that a darker belt approaches the poles in summer and recedes in winter.

The view of the Dawn of Life which I have just submitted is the obverse of the current view, which looks upon evolution as having produced, in some unexplained way, colloid complexes more and more able to utilize the energy of sunlight. This does not seem to me sufficiently automatic. I regard sunlight as testing all kinds of matter and complexes. It would flow through those channels which katergized it best; and, whenever an anergy transformer was activated, growth would result.

So far we have considered the origins of plant-like organisms — the anakatergizers.

The primeval animals — the katergizers — had their supply of energy ready-made by the plant in the form of complex chemical compounds (food). There would be a natural tendency for these foods to oxidize slowly back again to carbonic acid, and so forth, just as iron tends to oxidize. This process would be accelerated by enzymes or simpler catalysts. The chemical energy thus liberated could be expended in the form of movement by cilia. In fact, I have seen very actively lashing filamentous processes actually originate on dead blood-corpuscles.² Thus the chance of adsorption of fresh supplies of chemical energy would become greater, with potentialities for growth or more movement.

Cilia can be used for locomotion by a detached organism, or as food-wafters by an anchored creature. A presentday infusorian very neatly uses his cilia one way or the other at will.

If we start from a symbiotic anergykatergy jelly, the animal partner could be only very sluggish and small, unless he dissolved partnership and lived on a much larger amount of vegetable food. He could evolve in this direction and become more elaborate and active. He could still, as a neighbor, return to the plant the raw materials (carbonic acid and nitrates) which he used to do as a partner.

Adaptation to environment is regarded by physiologists as a cardinal attribute of living things. Hence I shall be expected to give an explanation of this power of adaptation. But, with my views, this does not seem necessary. The river teaches us that the river-bed is not adapted for the katergy of water but is made by the katergy of water (Wallace). Similarly, it may well be that plants and animals are not (as they seem) adapted for the katergy of their environment, but that their wonderful forms and activities have been made by the action of the Law of Katergy, with the aid of immense ages of evolution. Thus an elevated food-supply slowly carved the giraffe. A dim light in a damp grotto slowly carved the liverwort.

But if only adaptation in general is apparent, does that apply to some special organ, such as an eye? Surely that is an adaptation? Even in this instance the answer may be the same. For an eye enables its owner to keep in that stream of energy (food-supply) for the katergy of which it is the evolved channel or agent. Also, the eye usually enables it to avoid entering the stream of energy running through a carnivorous animal.

Variation, Heredity, and Reproduction I have not space to touch upon. They seem to introduce no added insuperable difficulties to my thesis. Immense complexity is inevitable.

The flow of food-energy and the channels down which it flows seem very like a river. Some twenty years ago, in southern Scotland, the field voles became astonishingly numerous. Very rapidly the owls and kestrels became correspondingly numerous, and laid double clutches of eggs. The quantity of energy represented by the flesh of the voles was in excess; the channels which had been evolved to katergize that energy overflowed their banks; that is, the owls and kestrels became very numerous.

Can anyone assert with confidence that plants and animals are too complex for such a history and origin as I have outlined, and for an evolved pedigree of such inconceivable length? Remember that a juggler can astonish and confound our minds after only a few years’ practice.

Does such a material view make us think any less of the animals and plants? Not a bit. It makes them ten times more interesting and fascinating than ever. In science, to simplify is to beautify.

However simply living things began, it is inevitable, in my opinion, that their evolved complexity should by this time far transcend our imagination and intelligence. Hence present complexity is no argument against the simplest beginnings.

If such a katergic theory of Life be accepted, an important and illuminating addition can at once be made to Darwin’s law of evolution by survival of the fittest. Fittest for what? Fittest for the most efficient katergy of their environments. In the case of plants, it is the most efficient ana-katergizers of sunlight energy which survive; in the case of animals, fungi, and bacteria, the most efficient katergizers of the chemical energy anergized by plants. I have given a few instances of this. It seems to me a direct corollary of my main doctrine, that living things are the evolved materializations of the laws of katergy. In other words, that they are the evolved channels carved for itself by katergy. Energy will naturally flow through the widest, steepest channels; the others will starve. The best katergizers will survive.

In conclusion, I submit that the above katergic hypothesis of Life and its origins is a single coherent view, which does unify, simplify, and illuminate our ideas of living things. It brings them into line with inorganic nature. It forms a thread of thought which strings together coherently an immense jumble of facts, just as a necklace may be strung together from a jumble of beads in a box. It is a simple common-sense hypothesis, without a trace of metaphysics. Also, since the hypothesis confines itself to the driving force of life, we can get a comprehensive view, unobscured by the dense clouds of our ignorance of the intimate regulating devices of living things.

Of the evidence I have submitted, each strand by itself is very weak. But as the strands point all in the same direction, they can readily be twisted into a rope.

In the newest book on the new school of Physics (Within the Atom, by Mills: 1922), I am pleased to see energy defined as ‘the motive-power of the physical Universe.’

I submit that it is also the ‘motivepower’ of Life.