LIFE WHAT IS IT? 445 



continue to do so until the catastrophic annihilation of the 

 globe, or the cessation of the conditions of life, render its 

 longer continuance impossible. 



The matter of which living tissue is made up may be 

 said to begin to live, or to take on the characteristics of 

 living, and organic matter, from its first departure from 

 the dead and inert condition of the gross alimentary 

 materials composing the nutritive pabulum, and to be 

 absolutely alive, when organically integrated or organised, 

 by any of the structures constituting a living organism or 

 body. In a degree, and in a sense, therefore, the chyle, the 

 blood, and the lymph are alive, the two former in pre- 

 paration for vital incorporation, and the latter in the process 

 of katabolic release and disorganisation absolutely complete 

 life or vitality alone belonging to the at present existent 

 functionally active tissues, organs, and individual organisms 

 or bodies. 



Life, thus viewed in relation to the individual living 

 human body, is, strictly speaking, a relative term, inasmuch 

 as life begins in the prospective tissue pabulum, culminates 

 in metabolic incorporation with the living tissue elements, 

 and declines with the katabolic liberation, circulation, and 

 outcasting of these elements. 



Life, therefore, is a tripartite, but indissolubly united, 

 transcendental entity, beginning with the vitalisation of 

 the elements of nutrition, culminating in their organic 

 incorporation, and ending with their devitalisation and 

 elimination. What it in essence is, however, we confess 

 our inability to realise, and are fain to accept, in pure faith, 

 the truth of its absolute control over the phenomena called 

 vital, and its imperishable existence, as a world's motive 

 force and fashioner of living forms, since its creation till 

 now and for ever, in the same way as we are intellectually 

 compelled to accept the truths and the conclusions of 

 revelation itself. 



The life of, and in, the individual man begins in uni- 

 cellular fashion, progresses along multi-cellular lines, cul- 

 minates in sustained structural and organic activity, and 

 declines somatically and molecularly, when, by its dynamic 

 indestructibility, it emerges from its erstwhile material 

 medium of existence unaffected so far as science can offer 



