48 OF HEALTH AND HUMAN NATURE. 



of physics to observe other phenomena of matter, without vainly 

 speculating on the essence of affinity or the essence of matter, to 

 comprehend which our faculties are in their nature incompetent. 

 By attributing life, the power of attraction, &c. to subtle and 

 mobile fluids, we not only do not advance a single step, for we 

 have still to explain what these fluids are and how they obtain 

 their powers, just as we had before in regard to common matter, 

 but we make the additional mysteries of their being united with 

 ordinary matter, and so united that life appears a power possessed 

 by it. The editors of'a medical review have in vain searched Mr. 

 Hunter's works for such an hypothesis, * and Mr. Lawrence has 

 had no better success, f so that I apprehend his meaning has been 

 misunderstood by those who constitute him its patron. J Grunt- 

 ing for a moment that life depends on a peculiar fine fluid, we 

 have still to account for mind, because life is not mind, — a cab- 

 bage is as much gifted with life as the wisest man. 



We have reason to believe that life never originates, but was 

 granted at the creation, and is communicated to assimilated mat- 

 ter and propagated from parent to offspring (62*2. B.) ; it is the 

 property of organised systems, producing various effects by 

 various kinds of organisation, but not quite peculiar to organised 

 matter, because capable of being possessed by matter in a fluid 

 state. § 



* Annals of Medicine and Surgery. 1817. p. 373. In the Treatise on the Blood, 

 (p. 89 sq.) Mr. Hunter says " Life is a property (not a subtle fluid) we do not un- 

 derstand." This property he conceives to reside in a certain matter similar to 

 the materials of the brain ; diffused through the body and even contained in the 

 blood. " The brain," he adds, " is a mass of this matter, not diffused through 

 any thing, for the purpose of that thing, but constituting an organ in itself." 

 This materia vita is therefore pretty solid and no other than medullary matter. 

 Its diffusion through the body will not bear mentioning in the present day. 



f lectures on the Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man. p. 84. 



X J. Abernethy, Lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons. 1814. 



§ As the fluids which form the embryo must be endowed with life, orga- 

 nisation cannot be the cause of life ; but in truth organisation is the effect of 



