18 OF THE VITAL POWERS. 



are now about to examine, is evident on the slightest 

 comparison of an organised economy with any inorganic 

 body, in which these inanimate powers are equally 

 strong. 



32. Indeed the vital powers are most conspicuously 

 manifested by their resistance and superiority to the 

 others ; v. c. during life, they so strongly oppose the 

 chemical affinities which induce putrefaction, that Stahl 

 and his followers referred their notion of life to this an- 

 tiseptic property ; * they so far exceed the force of 

 gravity, that, according to the celebrated problem of 

 Borelli, a dead muscle would be broken asunder by 

 the very same weight, which, if alive, it could easily 

 raise ; &c. 



33. As on the one hand, the vital properties are com- 

 pletely different from the properties of dead matter, so, 

 on the other, they must be carefully distinguished from 

 the mental faculties which will form the subject of the 

 next chapter : between them, however, there exists an 

 intimate and various relation, observable in many phe- 

 nomena, but especially in the diversity of tempera- 

 ment. 



34. The vital energy is the very basis of physiology, 

 and has therefore been always noticed, though under 

 different appellations. The titles of impetum faciens, 

 innate heat, archaeus, vital spirit, brute life, head of 

 the nervous system, active thinking principle, vital 

 tonic attraction, have been bestowed upon it by dif- 

 ferent authors. 



• " Life is formally nothing more than the preservation of the body in mix- 

 ture, corruptible indeed, but without the occurrence of corruption." Stahl. 

 " What wc call life is opposite to putridity." J. Ji nkbh. 



