148 WHAT IS LIFE? 



account for the facts of Nature, these processes must 

 be incessant and going on at an enormous rate. All 

 organic bodies, say the human body, regenerate very 

 quickly. 1 Let us say that the whole of the body only 

 regenerates in six months. Let the individual be a 



o 



mean in his lifetime, of four cubic feet. Let his life be, 

 say, fifty years. His life history would consist of a 

 mass of molecular matter equal to 400 cubic feet. 

 Xow add this conception to the calculation made by 

 Sir John Herschell, page 90, and where can figures 

 possibly come in to account for the regeneration which 

 is an obvious, eternal, and very quick differentiation 

 of molecular matter ? 



We shall presently consider the operations of the 

 organic whole, the always present mass of molecules, 

 which we call the Man, in his political, social, and 

 domestic actions, and more especially in his inter- 

 national actions. 



1 " With every breath which issues from our mouth, we expire a 

 portion of the food we eat, and of the water we drink. We change 

 so rapidly, that we may be said, after a lapse of four weeks, to be 

 different and new beings ; the atoms are exchanged, but the mode of 

 their combination remains the same. The atoms are in themselves 

 unchangeable and indestructible ; to-day in this, to-morrow in another 

 form, they present by the variety of their combinations the innumer- 

 able forms in which matter appears to our senses. All this while the 

 number of atoms in any element remains on the whole the same ; 

 not a single particle is formed anew ; nor can it, when formed, 

 disappear from existence. Proofs innumerable can be adduced to this 

 effect. Dissolution and generation, growth and decay, proceed every- 

 where hand in hand an eternal chain. With the bread which we 

 eat, the air we respire, we attract the matter which has formed the 

 bodies of our ancestors thousands of years ago ; and we return a 

 portion of our bodies to the external world, in order shortly after to 

 receive it again." (" Force and Matter," Dr. Louis Buchner, 1864, 



P- HO 



