354 



differences of vitality induced by chemical combination would 

 amount to mere differences in intensity. 



" A third mode of conceiving the change of character 

 which the vital principle may undergo in consequence of che- 

 mical combination may be the following. It may be supposed 

 that the vital principle, in its most exalted form, is not simple 

 or uncompounded, but combines in itself the attributes which 

 belong to human vitality, to the vitality of the lower animals, 

 and to that of vegetables. Remove the attributes of man, and 

 the vital principle is degraded to that of the inferior animals ; 

 withdraw also the attributes of the inferior animals, and the 

 vital principle becomes elementary ; it is reduced to that lowest 

 degree which is a mere property of matter. But matter is pe- 

 culiarly adapted to recover its lost attributes, when other kinds 

 of matter, possessed of these attributes, enter into combination 

 with it. 



" This, of course, is all hypothesis; but it is certain that 

 there are different kinds of life, that one kind may be made to 

 pass into another, and that any of the foregoing assumptions 

 may be employed in explaining such conversions : the facts 

 are quite independent of modes of explanation. 



" The transition from what is generally considered total 

 lifelessness to the vital state is in some cases so easy that there 

 is reason to believe the two conditions to be less opposed or 

 remote from each other than is generally supposed. It has 

 been shown that some creatures, to all appearance lifeless, 

 may be brought to life by vi'etting them ; yet, in some in- 

 stances, they had been for twenty-seven years dead in the 

 common sense of the word, and would have for ever remained 

 so. Others had been killed by immersion in alcohol several 

 times in the space of a few hours, and revivified each time. 

 Vegetable substances afford similar examples of facility of re- 

 suscitation, after 1000 or even 3000 years of total quiescence 

 of vitality. To explain these phenomena by pronouncing 



