THE RELATION OF LIFE TO OTREK FORCES. 725 



world. Of course the same process happens constantly during life ; but 

 in death the place of the departing elements is not taken by others. 



Here, then, a sharp boundary line is drawn where one kind of action 

 stops and the other begins ; where physical force ceases to be mani- 

 fested except as physical force, and where no further vital transforma- 

 tion takes place, or can in the body ever do so. For the notion of death 

 must include the idea of impossibility of revival, as a distinction from 

 that state of what is called " dormant vitality," in which, although there 

 is no life, there is- capability of living. Hence the explanation of the 

 difference between the effect of appliance of external force in the two 

 cases. Take, for examples, the fertile but not yet living egg, and the 

 barren or dead one. Every application of force to the one must excite 

 move in the direction of development ; the force, if used at all, is trans- 

 formed by the germ into vital energy, or the power by which it can 

 gather up and elaborate the materials for nutrition by which it is sur- 

 rounded. Hence its freedom throughout the brooding time from putre- 

 faction. In the other instance, the appliance of force excites only 

 degeneration ; if transformed at all, it is only into chemical force, 

 whereby the progress of destruction is hastened ; hence it soon rots. To 

 the one heat is the signal for development, to the other for decay. By 

 one it is taken up and manifested anew, and in a higher form ; to the 

 other it gives the impetus for a still quicker fall. 



Life, then, does not stand alone. It is but a special manifestation of 

 transformed force. " But if this be so," it may be said " if the resem- 

 blance of life to other forces be great, are not the differences still 

 greater ? " 



At the first glance, the distinctions between living organized tissue 

 and inorganic matter seem so great that the difficulty is in finding a like- 

 ness. And there is no doubt that these wide differences in both out- 

 ward configuration and intimate composition have been mainly the 

 causes of the delay in the recognition of the claims of life to a place 

 among other forces. And reasonably enough. For the notion that a 

 plant or an animal can have any kind of relationship in the discharge of 

 its functions to a galvanic battery or a steam engine is sufficiently start- 

 ling to the most credulous. But so it has been proved to be. 



Among the distinctions between living and unorganized matter, that 

 which includes differences in structure and proximate chemical compo- 

 sition has been always reckoned a great one. The very terms organic 

 and inorganic were, until quite recently, almost synonymous with those 

 which implied the influence of life and the want of it. The science of 

 chemistry, however, is a great leveller of artificial distinctions, and 

 many complex substances which, it was supposed, could not be formed 

 without the agency of life can be now made directly from their elements 

 or from very simple combinations of these. The number of complex 



