DEFINITION OF LIFE. 1 7 1 



vital acts, and not examples of vital actions at all. Although 

 assimilation and reasoning cannot be conceived to exist 

 except in relation with living beings, beings can be con- 

 ceived to live, and do live, which do not assimilate or 

 reason. And lastly, it may be urged, that creatures in which 

 assimilation and reasoning do occur, are not always assimi- 

 lating and reasoning, and yet they live in the intervals when 

 neither of these processes is taking place. Hence neither 

 assimilation nor reasoning is " essential to life," nor is 

 assimilation or reasoning "common to life of all orders." 

 The conception of life adopted by Mr. Spencer is as 

 follows : " The definite combination of heterogeneous 

 changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspond- 

 ence with external coexistences and sequences." A defini- 

 tion which, it appears to me, does not exclude every lifeless 

 machine that has been made, or that it may be possible to 

 make, nor include all living things. 



It is difficult to understand why Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 did not commence the inquiry by drawing attention to the 

 characters of the simplest forms of living matter known, and 

 by ascertaining what phenomena manifested by it were 

 common to it, and the higher and more complex forms 

 of life. Mr. Spencer neither takes this course, nor does 

 he explain to his readers why he does not consider it ad- 

 vantageous to do so. He does not apparently admit or 

 believe that in the lowest microscopic fungus, for example, 

 and man, are to be recognised many common characteristics 

 of fundamental importance. Mr. Herbert Spencer seems to 

 think that there is more in common between the lowest 

 form of life and the non-living than there is between the 

 lowest and highest forms of the living ; but in this opinion I 



