26 GENEHAL HISTORY OF 



ages of the world there has been evinced a restless desire within us 

 to pry into the nature or principle of life, and the precise conditions 

 on which it is retained ; and, notAvithstanding that our bodies, its 

 present abiding place, are confessedly frail and perishable, the un- 

 ravelling of an invisible and immaterial agent has been sought for by 

 a reference to them. Hence, each succeeding generation has occupied 

 itself in proving the fallacy of preceding theories on this mysterious 

 subject, and in forming new ones of its own. Even in modem 

 times we have been told that dead matter, under certain circum- 

 stances, becomes spontaneously alive, as, for instance, horse-hair 

 under water, &c. Too true it is, however, that, let our researches be 

 what they may, unless our views are directed upwards to a higher 

 |)rinciple than anything that we can argue upon, in what we see 

 around us, our laboiirs must end in nought but " vanity and vexa- 

 tion of spirit." 



What, perhaps, has tended to awaken owe inquisitiveness on this 

 subject, more than anything else, has been that death-like condition 

 of torpor, or siispended animation, in which human beings and other 

 animals have been known to remain for a great length of time, 

 dm'ing which the body is motionless, and apparently unsustained by 

 any nourishment whatever. In 1701, Leiiwenhoek observed this 

 phenomenon in the Rotatorial Infusoria ; and to such an extent did 

 his observations lead him, that he declares they were capable of 

 being removed from their native element, dried and preserved in this 

 condition for months, and even years, and then resuscitated on being 

 again moistened with water. That Rotatoria will revive, after re- 

 maining a day or two, apparently in a dry state, I have particidarly 

 mentioned in the Natural History of Animalcules. The distinguished 

 author of Die Infusionstierchen, after many illustrations and com- 

 parisons made "wath reference to this subject, affirms, that wherever 

 these creatures are completely dessicated, life can never again be 

 restored. In this respect, they exactly correspond with animals of a 

 larger kind ; like them, for a time, they may continue in a lethargic 

 and motionless condition, but, as it is well known, there wiU be 

 going on, within them, a consumption, or wasting away of the body, 

 equivalent to so much outward nouiishmcnt as would be needed for 

 the sustcntation of life. 



