ENERGY
427
ENERGY
the living, conscious organism, endowed with the
power of self-direction, differs fundamentally in
nature from a mere machine, and that it is there-
fore illegitimate to extend the application of the
law to organisms in precisely the same sense as to
inanimate matter until this extension is rigidly justi-
fied by experimental evidence. But evidence of this
quantitative accuracy is not forthcoming — nor at all
likely to be. As a consequence, scientists of the first
rank, such as Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin, have
always been careful to exclude living beings from their
formulation of the law. Moreover, they remind us
that, in certain respects, the animal structure resembles
a very delicate mechanism in which an extremely mi-
nute force may liberate or transform a relatively large
store of latent energy preserved in a very unstable con-
dition, as, e. g., the pressure of a hair-trigger may
explode a powder magazine.
(2) Again, many physicists of high rank (Clerk Maxwell, Tait, Balfour Stewart, Lodge, Poynting), who suppose, for sake of argument, the strict applica- tion of the law even to living beings, claim to harmo- nize the real action of the soul on the body with the law by conceiving this action as exercised merely in the form of a guiding or directing force. They generally do so, moreover, in connexion with the established truth of physics that an agent may modify the direc- tion of a force, or of a moving particle, without alter- ing the quantity of its energy, or adiling to the work done. Thus, a force acting at right angles to another force can alter thedirection of the latter without affect- ing its intensity. The pressure of the rail on th'e side of the wheel guides the tram-car; the tension of gravi- tation keeps the earth in its elliptical course round the sun without affecting the quantity of energy possessed by the moving mass. If the enormous force of gravi- tation were suddenly extinguished, say, by the annihi- lation of the sun, the earth would fly away at a tangent with the same energy as before. The axiom of phys- ics, that a deflecting force may do no work, is un- doubtedly helpful towards conceiving a reconciliation, even if it does not go the whole way to meet the difficulty.
(.■?) At the same time, the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas provides us with a clue which a.ssists us farther than any modern theory towards the com- plete solution of the problem. For this, four distinct factors must be kept in mind: —
(a) The entire quantity of the work done by the living being must in this view be accounted for by the material energies — mechanical, chemical, electrical, etc. — stored in the bodily organism. The soul, or mind, or vital power merely administers these, but does not increase or diminish them. The living organ- ism is an extremely complex collection of chemical compounds stored in blood and cellular tissue. Many of these are in very unstable condition. A multitude of qualitative changes are constantly going on, but the quantity of the work done is always merely the result of the using up of the material energies of the organ- ism. The soul, within limits, regulates the qualitative transformation of some of these material energies without altering the sum total.
(b) The action of the soul, whether through its con- scious or its merely vegetative activities, must be conceived as primarily directive.
(c) But this is not all. The soul not only guides but initiates and checks movements. The most delicate hair-trigger, it is urged, requires some pressure to move it, and this is work done, and so an addition to that of the machine. The trigger, too, presses with equal reactive force against the finger, and through this emits some of its energy back to another part of the univer.se. Consequently, any action of the soul upon the body, even if the pressure or tension be rela- tively small, involves, it is said, a double difficulty: the pressure communicated by the soul to the body
and that returned by the body to the soul. In reply:
First, what is needed in order to originate, guide, or
even inhibit a bodily movement is a transformation of
the (jualili/ of some of the energy located in certain cells
of the living organism. Whilst phy.sics, which seeks to
reduce the universe to mass-points in motion, is pri-
marily interested in quantity, qualitative differences
cannot be ignored or ultimately resolved into quanti-
tative differences. Direction is the qualitative ele-
ment in simple movement, and it is as important as
velocity or duration. Now, although the initiation of
movement, or the origination of a change in the qual-
ity of the material energy located in particles of inani-
mate matter, needs a stimulus involving the expendi-
ture of some energy, however small, it does not seem
necessary, and there is no proof, that every transfor-
mation of energy in living beings requires a similar
expenditure of energy to occasion the change. Be it
noted also that the energy of the stimulus often bears
no relation to the magnitude of the change and that in
many cases it is not incorporated in the main transfor-
mation. Indeed, the explosive materials of the earth
might conceivably be so collocated that the action of
an infinitesimal force would suffice to blow up a conti-
nent and effect a qualitative transformation of energy
vaster than the sinn total of all the changes that have
gone on in all living beings since the beginning of the
world. This should be remembered when it is alleged
that any action of the human mind on the body would
constitute a serious interference with the constancy of
the sum total of energy.
However, as a matter of fact, some qualitative changes of energy in the living organism which result in movement at least appear not to be excited by any- thing of the nature of physical impact. Psycho- physics teaches that concentration of thought on cer- tain projected movements, and the fostering of certain feelings, are speedily followed by qualitative changes in organic fluids with vascular and neuromotor proc- sesses. States of consciousness becoming intense seem to seek expression and find an outlet in bodily movement, however this is actually realized. This brings us to the further step in the solution of the prob- lem which the Aristotelico-Scholastic conception of the relation of body and mind, as "matter" and "form", contributes. In that theory the soul or vital principle is the " form "or determining principle of the living being. Coalescing with the material factor, it constitutes the living being. It gives to that being its specific nature. It unifies the material elements into one individual. It makes them and holds them a single living being of a certain kind. Biology reveals that the living organism is a mass of chemical compounds, many of them most com- plex and in very unstable equilibrium, constantly undergoing change and tending to dissolution into simpler and more stable substances. When life ceases, the process of disintegration sets in with great rapid- ity. The function, then, of this active informing principle is of a unifying, conserving, restraining character, holding back, as it were, and sustaining the potential energies of the organism in their unstable condition. From this view of the relation of the soul to the material constituents of the body, it would fol- low that the transformation of the potential energies of the living organism is accomplished in vital processes not by anything akin to positive physical pressure, but by some sort of liberative act. It would in this case suffice simply to unloose, to "let go", to cease the act of restraining, and the unstable forms of energy re- leased will thereby is.sue of themselves into other forms. In a sack of gas or liquid, for instance, the covering membrane determines the contents to a particular shape, and conserves them in a particular space. Somewhat analogously, in the Scholastic theory the soul, as "form", determines the qualitative character of the material with which it coalesces, while it con-
