142 PHYSIOLOGY OF ORGANIC LIFE, 



dual system, however, has one life only, not 

 many lives ; so one living system can have one 

 death only, not many deaths ; however different 

 the modes may be by which that death may 

 be endured. Varied and prolonged as it may 

 be in mode and in time, it is the fate allot- 

 ted to all generated beings ; and to which they 

 are doomed : -they are essentially transient 

 and frail, and subsist in a constant state of 

 progression, perfection, decomposition, and 

 decay. 



Putrefaction and fermentation are the means 

 by which the bond of animal and vegetable 

 matter becomes loosened, and broken ; and the 

 whole of the system develated from an or- 

 ganised, to a disorganised state; the parts 

 that were fixed become volatile ; such as 

 were inodorous, become offensive to the olfac- 

 tory sense ; such as were insipid, become 

 sapid ; those that were homogeneous, become 

 heterogeneous ; and, finally, resolved back 

 from a dead, to a common state. Putrefaction 

 and fermentation, in fact, have the same rela- 

 tion to dissolution, that the act of digestion has 

 to life ; while the act of digestion prepares 

 common and inanimate matter, and fits it to 

 receive the energy of the living principle to 

 which it is applied; putrefaction and fer- 

 mentation, on the contrary, bring back dead 

 matter to a common state : it is the last and 



