174 Some Account o/'M. Bichat's Theory of Life. 



thing depends upon the education they receive; at first feeble, 

 imperfect, indistinct, they gradually become developed, and 

 tlie direction given to this development, and the character 

 which they ultimately possess, depend in a great measure 

 upon the influence exercised upon them by extrinsic circum- 

 stances. 



Differing thus in their origin and in their mode of develop- 

 ment, the two lives differ also in the mode of their termination 

 in death, when this takes place naturally, that is, at the ex- 

 tremity of old age. The animal life is becoming gradually 

 extinguished, before the organic has begun to fail. One after 

 another its functions cease to be performed. The eye be- 

 comes obscured, it ceases to feel or to transmit the impression 

 of light. The ear becomes insensible to the impulse of sound. 

 The skin, shrivelled, hardened, deprived in part of its vessels, 

 is capable of but an obscure and indistinct sensation ; the 

 parts dependent upon it, the hair and beard, lose their vitality, 

 grow white, and tall off". The intellectual functions follow in 

 the train of the sensations, the perception is blunted, the me- 

 mory fails, the judgement l>ecomes infantile; and at the same 

 time the muscles under the influence of the brain, viz. those 

 of locomotion and voice, partake of tlie same decrepitude. 

 The old man moves with pain and difficulty, and speaks with 

 a thick and trembling voice. ' Seated near the fire which 

 warms him, he passes his days concentrated within himself; 

 estranged from every thing around him, deprived of desires, 

 of passions, of sensations, speaking little, because induced by 

 no motive to break silence, happy in the feeling that he still 

 exists, when almost every other one has already quitted him.' 

 In a certain sense then the animal life dies first, and leaves 

 the organic still going on in the }>erforraance of its functions; 

 this separation is more or less complete, and continues for a 

 greater or less length of time, in different cases. The old man 

 may contiiuie to breathe and digest, for some time after he has 

 to all intents and purposes ceased to think and to feel; he con- 

 tinues to exist as a vegetable, when he no longer lives as an ani- 

 mal. Death, however, at length seizes upon the organic hte. 

 Gradually and step by step the vital forces desert the different 

 organs: digestion, secretion, ike. languish, the circulation and 

 respiration are successively impeded and finally stop. 



In considering the vital projierties, as in all his inquiries 

 concerning lite, Bichat had constant regard to his grand divi- 

 sion into the two lives; and he recognises in the functions of 

 each life, the exhibition of ]:)roperties peculiar to itself, or at 

 least jiropertics modified by the nature and relations of that 

 life to whoKC functions they are subservient. In the organic 



life. 



