264 LIFE AND DEATH. 



exhibits life as long as it hangs on to the branch is absurd, 

 because differences of a much more important character 

 proclaim whether the leaf be alive or dead, and quite irre- 

 spective of its being connected with or detached from the 

 stem upon which it grew. 



It has been stated that a living thing might spring from 

 a dying or dead one, as a fungus from a dead elm, by 

 mere transference of force from the latter to the former, 

 the departing life-force of one thing, as it has been said, 

 being transformed into the life of the new one, but those 

 who advocate this strange doctrine have failed to prove that 

 the fungus did not grow from the germ of a pre-existing 

 fungus, and that it did not live upon the disintegrating elm 

 as other living things consume and grow at the expense of 

 other kinds of pabulum. 



Actions peculiar to Living Beings. A very little observa- 

 tion will convince us that in the body there are very 

 different kinds of actions proceeding simultaneously. The 

 formation and growth of muscular tissue, would seem to be 

 processes essentially distinct from muscular contraction, and 

 yet all these phenomena have been attributed to the in- 

 fluence of the same forces. But building up and breaking 

 down solution and precipitation development of struc- 

 ture and its removal addition of matter to, and removal of 

 matter from, a tissue have been attributed to the opera- 

 tion of the ordinary non-living forces. But notwithstanding 

 the confident boastings of the disciples of the modern 

 school of materialism, it is a fact that not one of these 

 phenomena as they occur in living beings can be explained 

 by any known laws of physics, or imitated artificially. 



It has been shown that there is a marked distinction 



