148 LIFE AND DEATH. 



life of the elements or elementary life, all the same? 

 Is there a sum total of characteristics which may 

 define life in general ? 



The physiologists, following in the steps of Claude 

 Bernard, respond in the affirmative. They accept as 

 valid and convincing the proof given of this vital 

 community by the illustrious experimentalist. How- 

 ever, there are some rare exceptions to this universal 

 assent. In this concert of approval thsre is at least 

 one discordant voice, that of M. F. Le Dantec.^ 



^ M. Le Dantec, of whose philosophical and rigorously 

 systematic mind I have the highest opinion, has laid down a 

 new conception of life, the essential basis of which is this very 

 distinction between elementary life and ordinary life; between 

 the life of the elements or of the beings formed from a single 

 cell, protophytes and protozoa, and the life of ordinary animals 

 and plants, which are multicellular complexes, and for that 

 reason called metazoa and vietaphytes. 



Further, in the elementary life peculiar to monocellular 

 beings (protozoa and cellular elements), M. Le Dantec dis- 

 tinguishes three manners of being: — The first condition, which 

 is elementary life manifested in all its perfection, cellular 

 health; the second condition is deteriorated elementary life, 

 cellular disease; and the third condition, which is latent life. 

 I should say at once that in so far as the fundamental dis- 

 tinction of the phenomena of elementary life and those of the 

 general life of animals and ordinary plants, metazoa or meta- 

 phytes, is concerned, we find it neither justified nor useful. 

 And further, manifested elementary life, as M. Le Dantec 

 understands it, would only belong to a small number of 

 elementary beings — for the protozoa, starting with the infusoria, 

 are not among the number — and to a still smaller number of 

 anatomical elements, since among the vertebrates we recognize 

 as almost the only elements satisfying it, the ovule, and perhaps 

 the leucocyte. Physiologists, therefore, do not agree with 

 M. Le Dantec as to the utility of adding one condition more to 

 those we all admit — namely, manifested animal life and latent 

 life. 



