324 E VOL U TION A ND DOGMA . 



Bichat defines life as " the sum total of the func- 

 tions which resist death;" Herbert Spencer makes 

 it " the continuous adjustment of internal relations 

 to external relations," while Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 tells us, that " Life is the state of an organized being 

 in which it maintains, or is capable of maintaining, 

 its structural integrity, by the constant interchange 

 of elements with the surrounding media." 1 



Such definitions, however, are almost as vague 

 and unsatisfactory as the notions implied in the 

 " spirits " of Aristotle and Plato, and in the archaeus 

 of Van Helmont and Paracelsus. They afford us no 

 clearer conception of what life really is in itself, of 

 what it is that constitutes the essential difference 

 between living and non-living matter, than we may 

 derive from the idea of Hippocrates, who regarded 

 " unintelligent nature as the mysterious agent in the 

 vital processes." 



But whatever views we may entertain respecting 

 the actual nature of life ; whether we regard it as a 

 force entirely different in kind from the purely phys- 

 ical forces, or look upon it as a special coordination 

 and integration of physical forces, acting in some 

 mysterious way on inanimate matter, and in such 

 wise as to cause it to exhibit what we call the phe- 

 nomena of life, the fact still remains, that at some 



1 " La vie," writes a professor of physiology of the Faculty of 

 Medicine, in Paris, " est une fonction chimique et la force dega- 

 ge par les etres vivants est une force d'origine chimique." In 

 contradistinction to this statement, Cardinal Zigliara declares : 

 " Vita repeti non potest a materia." Again, life has been defined 

 as " Une force qui tend a perfectionner et a reproduire, suivant 

 une forme determinee, 1'etre qu'elle anime par une impulsion 

 spontanee." 



