66 CONVERSION OF THE 



whose breath and heat have gone, and whose blood has 

 ceased to circulate," he will probably find no one to agree 

 with him. A drop of water will resuscitate or revive the one, 

 but who shall revitalize the other 7 



Those who advocate such doctrines as these do not 

 believe in the annihilation of force, when a living thing 

 suddenly passes from the living into the dead state ; but 

 they cannot demonstrate the new form or mode which the 

 departing life-energy assumes, or explain to us what in their 

 opinion becomes of it. They do not tell us whether when 

 a thing dies the vital mode of force takes the form of heat 

 or light, or electricity or simple motion, nor do they suggest 

 whether it does not more probably become transformed 

 into some as yet undiscovered mode of energy. 



If the dead thing only differs from the living thing by a 

 few degrees of heat or units by force, why can we not pre- 

 vent dissolution, or cause the actions to go on again after 

 they have once stopped ? Why is an elevation of tempera- 

 ture, above a certain fixed point, as fatal as exposure to 

 cold, and why is the fixed point different in different beings? 



Question of the direct conversion of the Non-living into the 

 Living. intimately connected with the idea of the correla- 

 tion and convertibility of physical and vital forces, is the 

 hypothesis of the direct conversion of non-living into living 

 matter a doctrine already referred to on page 64, and 

 considered at some length in my work on " Disease 

 Germs," recently published. I shall, therefore, only advert; 

 to it very briefly in this place. 



The opinion has been expressed that there is nothing a 

 priori ridiculous or improbable in the idea, that under cer- 

 tain conditions living things might be formed from inorganic 



