THE LIFE OF MATTER. 403 



111. 



ORGANIZATION AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF LIVING AND 

 BRUTE MATTER. 



Enumeration of the principal characters ofliviia/ heings. — The pro- 

 gramme which we have just sketched oblig-es us to seek in the brute 

 being for the properties of living beings. What, then, are, in fact, 

 the characteristics of an authentic, complete, living being? What are 

 its fundamental properties? We have enumerated them above as fol- 

 lows: A certain chemical composition, which is that of living matter; 

 a structure or organization; a specitic form; an evolution which has a 

 duration and an end, death; a property of growth or nutrition; a 

 property of reproduction. Which of these characters counts for the 

 most in the definition of life? If some of them were wanting, w-ould 

 that suffice to put liack a lieing, w^ho might possess the others, from the 

 animate world to that of minerals? That is precisely the question 

 that is under consideration. 



Organization and chemical composition of living heings. — On the 

 whole, all that we know concerning the constitution of living matter 

 and its organization is contained in the laws of the chemical unity and 

 morphologic unity of living beings. These laws seem to be a legiti- 

 mate generalization from all the facts observed. The first declares 

 that the phenomena of life are manifested only in and through living 

 matter, protoplasm; that is to say. in and through a substance which 

 has a certain chemical and physical composition. Chemically it is a 

 proteid complexus with a hexonic nucleus. Physically it shows a 

 frothy structure analogous to that resulting from the mixture of two 

 granular, immiscible liquids difiering in viscosity. The second law 

 declares that the phenomena of life can only be maintained in a proto- 

 plasm which has the organization belonging to a complete cell, with 

 its cell body and nucleus. 



Helative value of these laws — Edruptions. — What is the signification 

 of these laws of the chemical composition and organization of living- 

 beings? Evidently that life in all its plenitude can only occur and be 

 perpetuated under their protection. If these laws were abst)lute, if it 

 were true that no life were possible except in and through albuminous 

 protoplasm, except in and through the cell, the prol)lem of ''the life 

 of matter" would be decided in the negative. 



May it not be, however, that fragmentai'y and incomplete vital 

 manifestations, progressive sketches of a true life, may occur under 

 different conditions; for exam[)le. in matter which is not protoplasm, 

 and in a body which has a structure differing from that of a cell — that 

 is to say, in a being which would be neither animal nor plant? This is 

 the very question we have to considei-. and we must seek its solution 

 by the way of experimentation. 



