view of life celebrates its
greatest triumph.

For a long time it seemed as though there were an absolute difference
between "inorganic" and "organic" chemistry, between the chemical
processes and products found in free nature, and those within the "living"
body. The same elements were indeed found in both, but it seemed as if
they were subject in the living body to other and higher laws than those
observed in inanimate nature. Out of these elements the organism builds
up, by unexplained processes, peculiar chemical individualities, highly
organised and complex combinations which are never attained in inorganic
nature. This seems to afford indubitable evidence of a vital force with
mysterious super-chemical capacities.

But modern chemical science has succeeded in doing away with this absolute
difference between the two departments of chemistry, for it has achieved,
in retorts, in the laboratory, and with "natural" chemical means, what had
hitherto only been accomplished by "organic" chemistry. Since Woehler's
discovery that urea could be built up by artificial combination, more and
more of the carbon-compounds which were previously regarded as
specialities of the vital force have been produced by artificial
syntheses. The highest synthesis, that of proteids, has not yet been
discovered, but perhaps that, too, may yet be achieved.

And further: intensive observation through the microscope and in the
laboratory increases the knowledge of processes which can be analysed into
simple chemical processes, both in the plant and the animal body. These
are astonishing in their diversity and complexity, but nevertheless they
fulfil themselves according to known chemical laws, and they can be
imitated apart from the living substance. The "breaking up" of the
molecules of nutritive material,--that is to say, the preparation of them
as building material for the body,--does not take place magically and
automatically, but is associated with definitely demonstrable chemical
stuffs, which produce their effect even outside of the organism. The
fundamental function of living matter--"metabolism,"--that is, the constant
disruption and reconstruction of its own substance, has, it seems, been
brought at least nearer to a possible future explanation by the
recognition of a series of phenomena of a purely chemical nature, the
catalytic phenomena (the effects of ferments or "enzymes"). Ingenious
hypotheses are already being constructed, if no