The Beginnings of Life: Being Some Account of the Nature, Modes of Origin & Transformation of Lower Organisms, Volume 1

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Appleton, 1872
 

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Page 220 - The chief point in this application of histology to pathology is to obtain a recognition of the fact that the cell is really the ultimate morphological element in which there is any manifestation of life, and that we must not transfer the seat of real action to any point beyond the cell.
Page 310 - Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen produce water ; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeJess.
Page 123 - ... chalk. Examined chemically, it proves to be composed almost wholly of carbonate of lime; and if you make a section of it, in the same way as that of the piece of chalk was made, and view it with the microscope, it presents innumerable Globigerince embedded in a granular matrix. Thus this deep-sea mud is substantially chalk.
Page 93 - absolute commencement of organic life on the globe," which the reviewer says I {' cannot evade the admission of," I distinctly deny. The affirmation of universal evolution is in itself the negation of an "absolute commencement " of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing kind of being...
Page 58 - An active Principle : — howe'er removed From sense and observation, it subsists In all things, in all natures; in the stars Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, The moving waters, and the invisible air. Whate'er exists hath properties that spread Beyond itself, communicating good, A simple blessing, or with evil...
Page 8 - It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION.
Page 160 - the ultimate parts of the organism are not cells nor nuclei, but the minute molecules from which these are formed. They possess independent physical and vital properties, which enable them to unite and arrange themselves so as to produce higher forms. Among these are nuclei, cells, fibres, and membranes, all of which may be produced directly from molecules. The development and growth of organic tissues is owing to the successive formation of histogenetic and histolytic molecules. The breaking '...
Page 163 - We set out with molecules one degree higher in complexity than those molecules of nitrogenous colloidal substance into which organic matter is resolvable ; and we regard these somewhat more complex molecules as having the implied greater instability, greater sensitiveness to surrounding influences, and consequent greater mobility of form.
Page 254 - Their mingled atoms in each other fix. Thus Nature's hand the genial bed prepares With friendly discord, and with fruitful wars. From hence the surface of the ground...
Page 7 - When I say of Motion that it is as the genus of which heat is a species, I would be understood to mean, not that heat generates motion or that motion generates heat (though both are true in certain cases), but that Heat itself, its essence and quiddity, is Motion and nothing else...

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