PROXIMATE CONCEPTION OF LIFE. 83 



should be observed, as a fact in harmony with this conception, 

 that the higher the life the more conspicuous the variations. 

 On comparing inferior with superior organisms, these last will 

 be seen to display more rapid changes, or a more lengthened 

 series of them, or both. 



On contemplating afresh our two typical phenomena, we 

 may sec that vital change is further distinguished from non- 

 vital change, by being made up of many simultaneous changes. 

 Nutrition is not simply a series of actions, but includes many 

 actions going on together. During mastication the stomach 

 is busy with food already swallowed, on which it is pouring 

 out solvent fluids and expending muscular efforts. While the 

 stomach is still active, the intestines are performing their 

 secretive, contractile, and absorbent functions; and at the 

 same time that one meal is being digested, the nutriment 

 obtained from a previous meal is undergoing transformation 

 into tissue. So too is it, in a certain sense, with mental 

 changes. Though the states of consciousness which make 

 up an argument occur in series, yet, as each of them is com 

 plex, a number of simultaneous changes have taken place in 

 establishing it. Here as before, however, it must be 



admitted that the distinction between animate and inanimate 

 is not precise. No mass of dead matter can have its tem 

 perature altered, without at the same time undergoing an 

 alteration in bulk, and sometimes also in hygrometric state. 

 An inorganic body cannot be compressed, without being at 

 the same time changed in form, atomic arrangement, tem 

 perature, and electric condition. And in a vast and mobile 

 aggregate like the sea, the simultaneous as well as the succes 

 sive changes outnumber those going on in an animal. 

 Nevertheless, speaking generally, a living thing is distin 

 guished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes 

 at any moment taking place in it. Moreover, by this pecu 

 liarity, as by the previous one, not only is the vital more or 

 less clearly marked off from the non-vital; but creatures 

 possessing high vitality are marked off from those possessing 



