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the motion of the parts ceases when their arrangement is disturbed, 

 notwithstanding all the causes remain which before produced the 

 motion. 



6. The objection is an absurd one: we will, however, remove 

 it by an instance which is not one of ordinary death : arterial blood 

 contains the chemical elements: amputate a limb, wash out the 

 blood, let the textures be carefully preserved, transfuse arterial 

 blood into its proper channels: the phenomena of the living state 

 will not take place, as circulation, secretion, &c. the blood will flow 

 to a certain extent, as in any other dead tubes, until it coagulates. 



7. If, however, it were proved that life consists in a modifica- 

 tion of chymical or mechanical properties, the phenomena of this 

 modification are so different from the ordinary phenomena of these 

 properties, that they furnish a centra-distinction: and as the pheno- 

 mena are thus distinct, so also must be the cause by which they 

 are produced; the former therefore would be designated vital phe- 

 nomena, or the phenomena of life; and the latter, the vital principle, 

 or the principle of life. The nature of the principle is thus put 

 upon the footing of the universal laws of causation ; and whatever 

 might be its origin or connections, the same investigation is applica- 

 ble to it, as a cause peculiarly constituted, whether, indifferently, by 

 a modification of the common or of the chymical properties of 

 matter, or wholly by another class of properties which are essen- 

 tially connected with neither of these departments. 



8. It is not necessary in this place to connect all the processes 

 of organic life with the cause just adverted to, or with that which 

 has been called the vital principle. It is sufficient to indicate a 

 general efficacy which belongs to it, and return to the operations of 

 it which are connected more strictly with our present design. 



9. During life, or during the continuance of the cause above 

 spoken of, the identities of the structures are preserved; when this 

 cause ceases to act, the structures are disposed for change, and they 

 gradually run into chymical decomposition. It is then by the in* 

 ihience of the cause called the vital principle that the structures are 

 kept together: this cause ceasing to act, it is the tendency of the 

 textures to disunite, and return to what have been called their ele- 

 mentary constituents. 



10. As the constituents of the textures when left to themselves* 

 so far from having any disposition to unite, exhibit clearly the con- 

 trary tendency to separate; so the cause of their union, in the living 

 subject, is not to be looked for in their own nature, or their own 

 properties (which are mutually repulsive), but in something diffe- 

 rent from their chymical elements. 



11. As the chymical elements remain united only so long as 

 the principle of life is with them, and separate when the efficacy of 

 this principle is no longer displayed; so we appear warranted to in- 

 fer, that the vital principle ; or the condition of it in which it is 

 capable of the processes of life, is that which produces the union of 

 the elements of the textures; since by it alone this union is main- 

 tained, and it ceasing, the union is dissolved: than which double 

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