The Mechanism of Life

MOVEMENT is everywhere ; there is no such thing as immobility ; the very idea of rest is itself an illusion. Immobility is only apparent and relative, and disappears under closer examination. All terrestrial objects are driven with prodigious velocity around the sun, and the dwellers on the earth's equator travel each day around the 40,000 kilometres of its circumference. All objects on the globe are in motion, the inanimate as well as the living. The waters rise in vapour from the sea, float over mountain and valley, and return down the rivers to the sea again. Still more marvellous is the current of water which flows eternally from dew and rain, through the sap of plants and the blood of animals to the mineral world again. The very mountains crumble and their substance is washed down into the plains ; the winds move the air and raise the waves of the sea, whilst the strong ocean currents are produced by variations of temperature in different parts. This agitation, this incessant and universal motion, has been a favourite subject of poetic contemplation. Heraclitus writes : " There is a perpetual flow, all is one universal current ; nothing remains as it was, change alone is eternal." Ovid writes in his Metamorphoses : " Believe me, nothing perishes in this vast universe, but all varies, and changes its figure. I think that nothing endures long under the same appearance. What was solid earth has become sea, and solid ground has issued from the bosom of the waters."

The French poetess Mme. Ackermaim has expressed the same idea in beautiful verse : "Ainsi, jamais d'arret. L'immortelle matiere, Un seul instant encore n'a pu se reposer. La Nature ne fait, patiente ouvnere, Que defaire et recomposer. Tout se metamorphose entre ses mains actives; Partout le mouvemcnt incessant et divers, Dans le cercle eternel des formes fugitives, Agitant 1'immcnsc univers." It was only towards the middle of last century that mankind in the long search after unity in nature began to reali/e that all the movements of the universe are the manifestations of a single agent, which we call energy. In reality all the phenomena of nature may be conceived as diverse forms of motion, and the word " energy " is the common expression applied to all the various modes of motion in the universe. It was by the study of heat, and more especially of thermodynamics, that we obtained our conceptions of the science of energetics.

It was in Munich in 1798 that the English engineer Count liumford first observed that in the operation of boring a cannon the copper was heated to such a degree that the shavings became red-hot. This suggested his famous experiment, in which a heavy iron pestle was turned by horse power in a metal mortar filled with water. The water boiled, and when more water was added this also became heated to ebullition, and so on indefinitely. liumford argued that the heat thus obtained in an indefinite quantity could not be a material substance; that motion was the only thing added to the water without limit, and that therefore heat must be motion.

While RumfoixTs experiment showed the transformation of motion into heat, the steam engine was soon afterwards to demonstrate the opposite transformation, viz. that of heat into motion. The actual state of our knowledge with regard to the science of energy rests on two principles, that of Mayer and that of Carnot. The first principle was defined by J. R. Mayer, a medical practitioner of Heilbronn, whose work, Bemerkungen ueber die Kriifle der unbelebten Natiir, was published in 1842. " All physical phenomena," says Mayer, " whether vital or chemical, are forms of motion. All these forms of motion are susceptible of change into one another, and in all the transformations the

quantity of mechanical work represented by different modes of motion remains invariable." The energy of a given body is the amount of transferable motion stored up in that body, and is measured by its capacity of producing mechanical work. Ostwald thus defines energy: "Energy is work, all that can be obtained from work, and all that can be changed into work." Different forms of energy may be measured in different ways, but all forms of energy can be measured either in units of mechanical work or in units of heat, in kilogramme- metres or foot-pounds or in calories, according as the energy in question is transformed into mechanical work or into heat. The first principle of energetics, the conservation of energy, may be thus expressed: "Energy is eternal; none is ever created, and none is ever lost. The quantity of energy in the universe is invariable, and is conserved for ever in its integrity."

The unit by which we measure quantities of heat is the calory, the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogramme of water one degree Centigrade. The practical unit of mechanical work is the kilogramme- metre, the work required to raise the weight of one kilogramme to the height of one metre. The theoretical unit of work is one erg, the work required to move a mass of one gramme through one centimetre against a force of one dyne.

Joule of Manchester was the first to verify Mayer's law quantitatively. By an experiment analogous to that of Rumford, he transformed work into heat, arranging his apparatus so that he might measure the amount of heat produced and the work expended. On dividing the quantity of work that had disappeared by the quantity of heat which had been disengaged, he found that 424 kilogramme- metres of work had been expended for each calory of heat produced.

Him of Colmar measured the ratio of work to heat in the steam engine. He found that for each calory of heat which had disappeared there were produced 425 kilogramme-metres of work. This number 425 has therefore been accepted as representing in calories and kilogramme-metres the transformation of work into heat, and of heat into work. Further measurements on the transformations of other forms of energy, chemical energy and electrical energy, have shown that Joule's law of equivalents is general, and that the quantity of mechanical work represented by any form of energy remains undiminished after transformation, whatever the nature of that transformation.

Energy presents itself to us under two forms, potential and actual. Potential energy is slumbering energy, energy localized or locked up in the body. In order to transform potential energy into actual energy, there is required the intervention of an additional awakening, stimulating, or exciting energy from without. This stimulating energy may be almost infinitesimal in amount and bears no quantitative relation to the amount of energy transformed. It is the small amount of work required to turn the key which liberates an indeter- minate quantity of potential energy.

Actual energy, on the other hand, is energy in movement, awake and alert, ready to be transformed into any other form of energy without the intervention of any such external stimulating force. The passage of a given quantity of energy from the potential into the actual state is effected gradually, and during the time of transformation the sum of the actual and the potential energy remains constant. A weight suspended by a cord possesses a quantity of potential energy equal to the product of its weight into the height through which it can fall. This energy is locked up in a certain space, it cannot be transformed without the inter- vention of some external energy to cut the cord. During the falling of the weight, at the middle of its path, half of this slumbering energy has become kinetic, and is represented by the vis viva of the weight, while the other half is still potential and is equivalent to the work which the weight will accomplish during the second half of its fall. At any moment the sum of these two energies, the sleeping and the waking

energies, represents the total potential energy of the weight before it began to fkll. So with the powder in a gun. The potential energy of the powder cannot become actual without some stimulus, some exciting force from without to set it free. It is the external work of pressing the trigger that liberates the potential energy of the powder, transforming it into the actual energy of combustion, and the kinetic energy of the projectile. Since energy is work, and work is a function of motion, there is in reality no such thing as energy in repose. Matter according to our modern conception is a complex of molecules, atoms, and electrons ; we conceive the molecules of matter as always in movement, animated with cyclic or vibratory motion, these oscillatory or rotatory movements representing the potential energy of the body in question. Potential energy is thus the expression of molecular motion without translation of the molecules as a whole in space.

When this potential energy is transformed into actual energy by the intervention of some external force, we get a current of energy, a transference of the molecules in space. Thus, when an external force has released the weight, the molecular orbits in the falling body change in form, and the potential energy of the molecular motion becomes the kinetic energy of the falling body. Similarly in the conduction of heat, the energy of the hot body is transferred to a colder body by transmission of the vibratory motion from molecule to molecule. So again with chemical energy, the molecular ju$tion of combustion may be transformed into the radiant energy of the ethereal waves.

Actual energy may be regarded as a current of molecular motion. To make the matter clearer, let a mass of matter be represented by a regiment of soldiers. Then each soldier will represent an electron, a company will be an atom, and a battalion will be a molecule. As long as the soldiers mark time, turn, or otherwise exercise without advancing, we have simply an accumulation of potential energy. The word of command, " March," is the exciting force which suddenly transforms this potential into kinetic energy. The marching

regiment is a representation of a body possessing kinetic energy. Potential energy is energy confined to a certain point in space, whereas actual energy is a current of energy, continually changing its place or form. Energy is like water- power potential in the lake, actual in the waterfall or river. Any mechanism capable of causing one form of energy to pass into another is a transformer of energy. A steam engine is a transformer of energy, changing caloric energy into mechanical work. An electrical machine is a transformer of energy, converting mechanical motion into a current of electricity, whilst an electro-motor changes the movement of electrons into mechanical movement. Every living being, and even man himself, is but a transformer of energy, changing the energy derived from the earth and air and sun into mechanical motion, nervous energy, and heat.

The first law of energetics, that of the conservation of energy, is analogous to Lavoisier's principle in chemistry, the conservation of matter. The sign of equality which unites the terms of a chemical equation expresses the fact that after every chemical reaction the same total mass of matter is present as before the transformation. This is also true of energy ; after every transformation we find exactly the same total quantity of energy as before it. This, however, tells us nothing as to the conditions of the transformation, or the causes, i.e. the anterior phenomena, which determined such transformation.

The second principle of energetics, that of Carnot, enunciated in 1824, deals with the conditions under which a transformation of energy is possible. A mass of water at a certain height represents a quantity of potential energy equal to the product of its weight by its height ; but this energy cannot produce mechanical work unless the water is allowed to fall. Consider two lakes at the same altitude and of the same capacity, one of which is entirely landlocked, while the other has an open channel leading to the sea. Each lake represents the same quantity of potential energy, but the energy of the landlocked lake is useless, it cannot be trans-

formed ; whereas the other lake whose water can run into the sea realizes the conditions necessary for utilization, viz. the transforniability of its energy. The same may be said of all forms of energy ; a heat engine can only act as a transformer, change heat into work, if there is a difference of temperature between its source and its sink ; an electric motor can only work if there is a fall of potential between the entrance and the exit of the electric current.

Energy presents itself to us as the product of two factors, weight and height in the waterfall, quantity and temperature in the heat engine, current intensity and potential in the electric motor. In considering these two factors we may note that one factor is always a quantity (Q) and the other an intensity (I). This latter expresses some sort of difference of position or condition, the height of the weight, a difference of tempera- ture in the heat engine, of pressure in the gas engine, or of electric potential in the dynamo or electric furnace. There can be no current of energy without this difference of potential, and therefore no transformation from one form of energy to another.

The second law of thermodynamics, Carnot's law, may therefore be enunciated thus : " Energy cannot be transformed without a fall of potential. 11 We may also derive this principle from a consideration of the formula of efficiency, the ratio of the work done by the transformer to the work done on the transformer. The total energy is the product QI, i.e. the product of the total quantity by the total intensity at our disposal. The transformed energy is Q(I I'), the product of the total quantity by the difference of intensity at the inlet and at the outlet of the machine. The formula for efficiency thus becomes

Vlf ~ J = """ . If I represents a temperature, then in order that the efficiency may be positive I' must be less than I, there must be a fall of temperature in the machine. If I were greater than I, i.e. if the temperature at the outlet were greater than that at the inlet, the efficiency would be a negative one, and the transformer would have to borrow heat from some external source. Entropy. In every transformation of energy a certain portion of the energy is transformed into heat : a lamp gives out useless heat as well as light, a machine gives out useless heat as well as mechanical work. This loss of useful energy as heat occurs in every transference or transformation of energy ; it is only in the case of heat passing from a hotter to a colder body that there is no such transformation. When equality of temperature is established there has been no loss of energy, but the whole of the energy has become unutilizable, i.e. untransformable. In the formula of efficiency the fall of intensity I I' is now zero, and therefore the efficiency of the

Since in all its transformations a certain fraction of the energy is changed into heat, there is a tendency in nature for all differences of temperature to become equalized. Hence the quantity of utilixable energy in the universe tends to diminish. Clausius called this unutilizable energy enmeshed in the substance of a body its entropy, and showed that in every transformation the amount of this unutilizable energy tended to increase. " The entropy of a system always tends towards a maximum value."

If this gradual incessant increase of entropy is universal in nature, and if there is no compensatory mechanism, the universe must be tending towards a definite end, when the whole of its energy shall have been transformed into unutiliz- able heat with a uniform temperature. There is, however, reason to suppose that some such compensatory mechanism does in fact exist. Behind us stretches an infinite past, and in the future we believe that the phenomena of nature will be unrolled in a cycle which has no end. But the arguments derived from a study of entropy apply only to the facts and phenomena actually under our notice, the supposed impossi-

bility, without borrowing energy from without, of re-establish- ing the differences of temperature by drawing heat from a colder in order to concentrate it in a hotter body, and may not be absolutely identical with those obtaining in other ages. Our ignorance of such a phenomenon and our powcrlessness to produce it in no way argue that it is impossible. It may exist for aught we know in some other region of space, or in another time than ours. We may perhaps some day obtain artificially the conditions which would render possible such a phenomenon, since it may be possible to produce in the experimental laboratory conditions which are not spontane- ously reali/ed in nature under present, conditions. The future may perchance reveal to us absolutely new phenomena which have not hitherto been reali/ed. In his work on the evolution of matter and of energy Gustave le Bon gives expression to some interesting and original ideas on this subject.

The laws of Mayer and Carnot alone are not sufficient to explain the phenomena of life, without some consideration of the laws of stimulus. Mayer's principle asserts the conserva- tion of energy, and Carnot^s the conditions necessary for its transformation, but these alone cannot account for the trans- formation of potential into actual energy. A weight suspended by a cord does not fall merely because there is room for its descent. We need the intervention of some outside force to cut the cord. In every transformation of energy this external force is required to cut the cord, or pull the trigger, some external force of excitation or liberation, an energy which may be infinitesimal in amount, and which bears no proportion to the quantity of potential energy it sets free. This inter- vention of an excitatory, stimulating, or liberating energy is universal. Every phenomenon of nature is but a trans- formation or a transference of energy, determined by the intervention of a minimal quantity of energy from without. This liberation of large quantities of potential energy by an exceedingly small external stimulus has not hitherto received the consideration it demands. Certain phenomena, such as those of chemical catalysis or the action of soluble ferments, excite our astonishment because such extremely small quantities of

certain substances will determine the chemical transformations of large quantities of matter, there being no proportion between the amount of the catalytic substance and of the matter transformed. These phenomena are, however, only particular cases of the general law of energetics that trans- formation requires a stimulus. The cataly/er, or ferment, does not contribute matter to the reaction, but only the minimal energy necessary to liberate the chemical potential energy stored in the fermenting substance.

We must therefore add a third to the two laws of ener- getics, Mayer's law of conservation, and Carnot's law of fall of potential. This third law is the law of stimulus, the necessity of the intervention of an external excitatory force capable of setting in motion the current of energy required for a trans- formation. This stimulus is the primary phenomenon, the determinant cause of such transformation. Three conditions, then, are required for a transformation or displacement of energy :

1. The cause, the intervention of a stimulus which starts the transformation or displacement. *3. The condition, the conservation of the energy con- cerned, since being indestructible its total quantity cannot alter. Every living being is a transformer of energy. The lower animals and man himself receive from food and air the potential energy which becomes actual under the process of oxydation. This chemical combustion is the source of all vital energy ; the ancients aptly compared life to a flame, and Lavoisier has shown that life, like the flame, is maintained by a process of oxydation. The energy derived from food and air is restored by the organism to the external world in the form of heat and mechanical motion. The celebrated experiments of Atwater show that there is an absolute equality between the energy obtained from the oxydation of the various aliments and the sum of the calorific and mechanical energy liberated by a living being.

vegetable world, or indirectly from vegetables which have passed through the flesh of animals. Vegetables in their turn obtain their substance from the mineral world and their energy from the sun. The salts, the water, and the carbonic acid absorbed by plants possess no store of potential energy. Whence then can they obtain the potential energy which they transmit to animals and man, if not from the sun? The energy of the solar radiations is absorbed by the chlorophyll of the leaves, and stored up in the organic carbohydrates formed by the synthesis of water and carbon. Chlorophyll has the peculiar property of reducing carbonic acid, and uniting the carbon with water in different proportions to form sugar and starch, whilst fats and vegetable albumens are also formed by an analogous reaction. All these complex bodies are stores of energy ; the vital processes of oxydation do but liberate in the human body the energy which the chlorophyll of plants has absorbed from the solar rays.

We must look, then, to the sun as the direct source of all the energy which animates the surface of the earth. The sun looses the winds, and raises the waters of the sea to the mountain-tops, to form the rivers and torrents which return again to the sea ; the sun warms our hearths, drives our ships, and works our steam engines. There is no sign of life or movement on our planet which does not come directly or indirectly from the solar rays. It may be asked by what path does the chemical energy of the living organism pass into the mechanical energy of motion. It would appear that the intermediary step cannot be heat, as in the steam engine, since the necessary temperature would be quite incompatible with life.

r _ j ,, the ratio of the difference of the absolute temperatures at the source and at the sink, to the absolute temperature at the source. Calori metric measurements have shown that the efficiency of the human machine is about one-fifth, i.e. it can transform 20 per cent, of the energy absorbed. The ordinary temperature of muscle* is 38 C., or 311 absolute. We have Thus, in order to obtain an efficiency of per cent, with an ordinary thermic transformer, having a temperature of 38 at the sink, we should need a temperature of over 115 C. at the source. Such a temperature would be quite incompat- ible with the integrity of living tissues, and we may therefore conclude that the human organism is not a heat engine.