526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and infinitely varied, which are going on incessantly in the parts 

 of living bodies. We know that the vital movement in each indi- 

 vidual is to come to an end at a given moment that is death. 

 We have a thousand means of provoking a stoppage of it. We 

 can only propagate it in a certain way when we furnish it, by 

 means of food or generation, with the material substratum neces- 

 sary for its production and development. We can in like man- 

 ner divert it and cause it to produce monsters ; but we have no 

 power to make it appear where it does not exist. 



Vital movement is continuous. It was formerly thought pos- 

 sible to suspend it ; that seeds and living beings could die for the 

 moment, and the former keep intact their faculty of germinating, 

 and the latter return to a new existence when placed in favorable 

 conditions. Reviving animals have excited much attention, but 

 little thought has till the present been directed to the supposed 

 suspension of life. In reality, these beings continue to live, but 

 extremely little. The vital movement is not suspended, but is 

 considerably diminished rather than retarded, like the vibration 

 of a sounding cord which loses in intensity till it is no longer 

 heard, while the finger can still feel it tremble. About forty years 

 ago some speculators upon public credulity publicly distributed 

 through all Europe, selling it very dear, a wheat which they said 

 had been taken from a mummy in Egypt, and which when planted 

 gave a prolific return. This was a simple cheat. Yet seeds are 

 known which have retained the germinating faculty a very long 

 time ; they really continue to live, carrying within themselves the 

 inner movement which becomes slower every day and ends with 

 extinction. The seed will inevitably die ; whether it be after a 

 few years or in a century or two makes little difference it will die. 



Vital movement is then continuous, but with incessant renew- 

 als, and it also has a very special character. It is propagated in- 

 definitely, while it continually casts off a part of the materials 

 which it had previously animated. That yellowed wheat which 

 the reaper is going to cut, the stubble of which is destined to 

 cover some cottage, the seed of which seems wholly devoted to the 

 support of the life of men, which has to our view not lived a 

 whole year that wheat is eternal ; it has lived through all the 

 past, and may live through all the future. It has dried, but that 

 is only in appearance. Life has not withdrawn from it. Planted 

 next year, it will project a new head, and so on for thousands of 

 years. 



We are accustomed to regard as a living being having a kind 

 of beginning and end the head which issues from the seed in the 

 spring, and which autumn will mature. The conception is wholly 

 arbitrary. We really know of no beginning or end to this 

 head. It is not even an individual in the philosophical sense of 



