42 INTRODUCTION. 



By others organization is considered as the result of 

 life; while some again view life as the result of organiza- 

 tion, each alternately being made cause and effect. 



The celebrated Bichat describes life to be "the sum of 

 the functions by which death is resisted." 



Another physiologist makes life to consist in "the phe- 

 nomena peculiar to organized bodies, taken as a whole." 



M. Beclard asserts that life consists essentially in one 

 fact, "that all organized bodies, during a determined pe- 

 riod, are centres penetrated by foreign substances, which 

 they appropriate to themselves, and from which issue others 

 that become foreign to them; and in this movement of 

 momentary formation the matter of the body changes con- 

 tinually, but its form still remains." He adds, that life 

 does not consist in a re-union of molecules, which were 

 before separated, as occurs in the case of chemical attraction, 

 nor simply in an expulsion of the elements previously com- 

 bined, as in that which is produced by the expulsive action 

 of caloric, but in a movement of temporary formation, in 

 which some elements remain united, which would separate 

 should life cease, and in which the elementary parts are 

 separated without the action of caloric, and this vital ac- 

 tion exists only in organized bodies ; and it is in this 

 "close and reciprocal connection of organization and life 

 that is to be found the reason why they have by turns 

 been considered the cause and effect of each other." 



M. Beclard very justly remarks that organization and 

 life are a complex idea are inseparable in their connec- 

 tion, and that life is "organization in action." 



Without entering into the abstract question of what is 

 life? a very unprofitable and, we think, useless specula- 

 tion we will at once proceed to consider the fundamental 

 elements of organization, whose analysis is its only correct 

 definition. 



The first element we notice as fundamental and essential 

 to organization, is that the organized body shall have a 

 definite living origin; that it shall be born of a parent like 



