102 Dr. A. P. W. Philip on the 
an increasing difficulty in emptying itself. By the operation of 
these causes, both sides of the heart in warm-blooded animals 
soon lose their power after respiration ceases. The arteries 
under such circumstances, it is evident, cannot long supply fluids 
proper for the purposes of assimilation. The nervous and mus- 
cular solids, therefore, soon deviate from the state necessary for 
the functions of life, which at length cease in every part. 
Such seems to be the order in which the functions always 
cease in death, whether it be occasioned by injury of the sangui- 
ferous or nervous system, or both, with the exception of the cases 
above-mentioned, in which the sensorial or nervous system is so 
impressed as immediately to destroy all the functions. From 
which it appears that the degree of vital energy required for the 
sensorial, is greater than that required for the nervous and mus- 
cular, functions; the cause of which we shall presently have oc- 
casion to consider. Respiration, consequently, is the first vital 
function which fails, being the only one to which the sensorial 
power is necessary. 
contradicted by many experiments, and which Bichat does not attempt to 
support by any observation or experiment directly bearing on the point. 
These circumstances have led him into the most striking inconsistencies 
in his great division of the functions into organic and animal. If the expe- 
riments which have been laid before the reader be correct, the sensorial 
functions constitute the animal, and the nervous and muscular the organic 
life. ‘To this it may be objected that the less perfect animals and plants 
appear to have no nervous system. Would it not be more correct to say 
that the operation of their nervous system is more confined? Wherever 
secretion is performed, the nervous influence, or a power resembling it, 
mustexist. In order that a being possessed of the nervous and muscular 
systems alone, may live in perfect vigour, it is only necessary that respira- 
tion should be performed, as circulation is by powers of involuntary mo- 
tion. A being so formed, though possessed of all the powers of life, would 
be wholly unconnected with the external world, except as far as food and 
the influence of air and light are necessary to its existence; yet in the 
second section of his sixth article, Bichat maintains that the passions belong 
to the organic life, an inconsistency which alone sufficiently evinces a radi- 
cal defect in hissystem. Can the passions belong to that life in which they 
never could be excited? Even according to Bichat’s definition of organic 
life, it is common to the animal and vegetable world! 
