88 The Science of Life. 



phenomena; and that the known physico-chemical 

 causes do not seem adequate to the result. In other 

 words, the categories of mechanism, of chemistry, and 

 physics, cannot be forced upon vitality without doing 

 violence to the very idea of the organism a complex 

 adaptive synthesis of matter and energy whose secret 

 remains unread. 



When the neo-vitalists go further, and insist on an 

 idealist as opposed to a materialistic conception, they 

 may be quite correct, but they are raising another ques- 

 tion, which is philosophical rather than biological. 



Biologists are so often preoccupied with anatomy, 

 and the analysis of the dead, that critics have scoffed 

 The Kinds at biological work as "mere necrology", 

 of Death. The criticism is healthful, for it must be a 

 purblind biology that ignores the intact living creature; 

 yet in justice it must be remarked that anatomical 

 analysis has done much to vitalize our conceptions of 

 the living. There is a real sense in which it is true 

 that it is only by knowing the dry bones that we can 

 ever really see a living bird. Indeed, one of the charac- 

 teristic advances of modern biology is a clearer under- 

 standing of death. When we understand death much 

 better, we shall understand life a little. 



Death plainly means the irrecoverable cessation of 

 organic life, but it seems profitable, both theoretically 

 and practically, to distinguish (a) violent, (b) microbic, 

 and (c) natural death. 



(a) Violent death, like that of the grouse shot by the 

 sportsman, of the worm swallowed by the fish, of the 

 jelly-fish stranded on the beach, is clearly separable from 

 other forms of death. Life is a function of organism 

 and environment ; a violent change in either term of the 

 function spells death. Although there are some organ- 

 isms, perhaps all fishes, which always die a violent 

 death, it seems fair to regard violent death as something 

 catastrophic, accidental, or casual, something extrinsic 

 and not inevitable. 



(b) Distinguishable from violent death, connecting it 

 with natural death, is what we may call microbic death, 

 which bulks largely in the mortality of organisms. We 



