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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



new star in the constellation Serpentarius ; this 

 change in the heavens, taking place, we may say, 

 under the observer's very eyes, began to shake 

 the belief of the ancients that " the substance of 

 the heavens is unalterable." At the present 

 day the minds of astronomers have grown famil- 

 iar with the idea of constant mobility and evolu- 

 tion in the starry world. " The stars have not 

 existed forever," says Faye ; " they have had a 

 period of formation ; they will similarly have a 

 period of decline, followed by final extinction." 

 Therefore, that eternity of the heavenly bodies 

 to which Bichat appeals is not real ; they go 

 through an evolution, as living bodies do — an 

 evolution which is slow when compared with our 

 hasty life, and which ranges over an extent of 

 time out of all proportion to that we are wont to 

 think of in our own surroundings. In another 

 view, before astronomers understood the laws 

 of movement of the heavenly bodies, they had 

 formed the notion of sidereal powers and forces, 

 as physiologists recognize vital powers and forces. 

 Even Kepler admitted a " governing sidereal 

 spirit," under whose influence " the planets fol- 

 low calculated curves in space, without disturb- 

 ing the stars that roll in other orbits, or derang- 

 ing the harmony established by the divine geom- 

 eter." 



If living bodies are not the only ones subject 

 to the law of evolution, neither is the power of 

 self-restoration, of scarring over their wounds, ex- 

 clusively theirs, although its more active mani- 

 festations take place in them. We all know that 

 when a living organism has been mutilated, it 

 tends to its own restoration in accordance with 

 the laws of its special morphology ; the hurt 

 heals over in the plant and animal, the lost sub- 

 stance is renewed, and the being repairs itself in 

 its form and unity. This phenomenon of re- 

 construction, of redintegration, has made a deep 

 impression on philosophic naturalists, and they 

 dwell earnestly on that striving of life for indi- 

 viduality which moulds the living creature to an 

 harmonious whole, a kind of little world within 

 the great one. Whenever the concord of the 

 organic structure is disturbed, it strives for re- 

 establishment, but these facts do not require for 

 their explanation any appeal to a force, a vital 

 property in opposition to physical ones. Indeed, 

 mineral substances show the possession of a like 

 morphological unity, and of the same tendency 

 to self-repair. Crystals, as well as living beings, 

 have their shapes and special plan, and are capa- 

 ble of influence from perturbing actions by the 

 surrounding medium. That physical force which 



sets the crystalline atoms in order accordant with 

 the laws of reasoned geometry, works similar re- 

 sults with that which arranges organized matter 

 in the form of an animal or a plant. Pasteur 

 has noted certain facts of crystalline cicatriza- 

 tion and restoration well worthy of our study. 

 He examined several crystals, and subjected them 

 to mutilations, which he observed to be repaired 

 with great regularity and rapidity. The result of 

 his researches is that, "when a crystal is broken 

 on any one of its faces, and replaced in the fluid 

 of crystallization, we remark that while the crys- 

 tal increases in all directions by the deposit of 

 crystalline particles, a very decided simultaneous 

 action takes place at the broken or injured part, 

 and this action suffices in a few hours, not mere- 

 ly for the general, regular formation of increase 

 over all parts of the crystal, but also for the res- 

 toration of regularity in the injured part." These 

 singular facts of crystalline reparation are exact- 

 ly comparable with those that living beings pre- 

 sent to view when a wound, more or less deep, is 

 inflicted on them. In the crystal, as in the ani- 

 mal, the injured part scars over, regains by de- 

 grees its original shape, and in either case the 

 work of reformation of the tissues at that point 

 is much more energetic than it is under the usual 

 conditions of development. 



The considerations thus briefly set forth, which 

 might be enlarged on without end, seem to ns to 

 prove convincingly that the deep line of repara- 

 tion which the vitalists propose to draw between 

 living bodies and lifeless substances in regard to 

 their continuance, their development, and their 

 faculty of formative restoration, is not author- 

 ized by facts. As regards the conflict they ima- 

 gine between physical forces or properties and 

 vital forces or properties, it is the expression of a 

 serious mistake. 



This theory of vital properties maintains that 

 in inert substances there is to be found only a 

 single order of properties, and that in living 

 bodies two kinds are to be found — physical and 

 vital — which are in a state of constant conflict 

 and opposition, each striving to prevail over the 

 other. " While life lasts," Bichat says, " the 

 physical properties, fettered by the vital proper- 

 ties, are perpetually checked in the phenomena 

 they would tend to produce." The logical result 

 of this opposition must be, that the stronger the 

 influence and control the vital properties gain in 

 a living organism, the more feeble and subordi- 

 nate the physico-chemical properties will be- 

 come ; and that reciprocally the vital properties 

 will droop and fail in proportion to the greater 



