LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION 



DEFINITIONS OF LIFE— PROTOPLASM 

 —ATTRIBUTES OF LIVING MATTER 



"Saireyj" says Mrs Harris, "sech is life. Vich likeways is the 

 hend of all things." 



Mrs Gamp. Martin Chuzzlewit. Chaeles Dickens, 



Definitions of Life 



At the Dundee meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science held in 1912, the President intro- 

 duced the subject of Life, and the topic proved undoubtedly 

 interesting and even stimulating. It led to much discussion, 

 but, as far as I am aware, no one tried to define life or even 

 threw much new light on the question the savants so eagerly- 

 discussed : 



Myself when young did eagerly frequent 

 Doctor and Saint and heard great argument 



About it and about ; but evermore 

 Came out by the same door as in I went. 



This seems to be the fate of anyone who tries to define 

 life. The Oxford Dictionary tells us that life is "the con- 

 dition or attribute of living or being alive; animate ex- 

 istence. Opposed to death.^^ This definition at once begs 

 the question and argues in a circle. Dr Johnson takes a 

 more eighteenth century attitude and says life is "union 

 and co-operation of soul with body; vitality; animation, 

 opposed to an inanimate state.''^ One would like to have 

 heard Dr Johnson's opinion on protoplasm! Even Herbert 

 Spencer's formula that life is "the continuous adjustment of 

 internal relations to external relations..." omits the funda- 

 mental consideration that we know life only as a quality of 



S L X 



Library 

 N. C. State College 



