THE MECHANISM OF LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



LIFE AND LIVING BEINGS 



Primitive man distinguished but two kinds of bodies in nature, 

 those which were motionless and those which were animated. 

 Movement was for him the expression of life. The stream, the 

 wind, the waves, all were alive, and each was endowed with all 

 the attributes of life — will, sentiment, and passion. Ancient 

 Greek mythology is but the poetic expression of this primitive 

 conception. 



In the evolution of the intelligence, as in that of the body, 

 the development of the individual is but a repetition of the 

 development of the race. Even now children attribute life to 

 everything that moves. For them a little bird still lives in the 

 inside of a watch, and produces the tick-tick of the wheels. 

 In modern times, however, we have learnt that everything 

 in nature moves, so that motion of itself cannot be considered 

 as the characteristic of life. 



Heraclitus aptly compares life to a flame. Aristotle says, 

 " Life is nutrition, growth, and decay, — having for its cause a 

 principle which has its end in itself, namely hrzt.zy^ia. This 

 principle is itself in need of definition, and Aristotle only 

 substitutes one unknown epithet for another. 



Bichat defined life as the ensemble of the functions which 

 resist death. This is to define life in terms of death, — but 

 death is but the end of life, and cannot be defined without 

 first defining life. Claude Bernard rejects all definition 

 of life as insufficient, and incompatible with experimental 

 science. 

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