552 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



this interesting transformation could blur the sharp lines of 

 distinction between the living and the non-living. 



It is characteristic of vitality to have its youth, its prime, 

 and its decline, but there is nothing of this in the non-living. 

 The hills are everlasting ; but neither the sheep nor the 

 shepherds are. " Change and decay " applies only to the 

 living environment : the " birth " and " death " of worlds 

 is poetry. 



It is of the essence of living things to have phases or 

 rhythms in their metabolism and phases or stages in their 

 life-history. If the non-living corresponds at all to any phase 

 or stage of the living matter, it is to the phase of latent life. 



Latent life is that condition of living matter where there 

 are no signs of life, only the potentialities of life in the future. 

 The vital material of the frozen frog, insect, fish, or rotifer, 

 while it remains in latent life, is in the status quo ante just as 

 a stone is ; but whereas the frozen organism can revive, as 

 we say, or again shows signs of vitality, that is, come out of 

 its latent phase, the stone or crystal cannot, and all attempts 

 to represent it doing so are based on metaphors. 



The living thing tends to death ; the non-living tends to 

 nothing at all. Death is the natural end of life ; physical 

 science as such knows nothing of the endless existence of 

 living things. 



In life there is some affectability and some functional 

 inertia ; in latent life there is minimal affectability and much 

 functional inertia ; in death there is no affectability and 

 maximal functional inertia. 



This is, then, a new definition of death, for it is a positive 

 one, all others, such as " death is the cessation of existence," 

 are negative. Whereas in life there are signs and potentialities 

 for future life ; in latent life there are no signs but only 

 potentialities ; in death there are no signs and no potentialities. 

 This is another new positive definition of death. 



These conclusions do not necessarily preclude the belief 

 that living matter has been evolved from non-living as Sir 

 Edward Schafer and Prof. B. Moore indicate. Possessing the 

 fundamental properties of affectability, functional inertia, and 

 the power to transmute energy, it is conceivable that non- 

 living matter became, physico-chemically, so unstable that it 

 finally acquired the four properties which have just been 



