WHAT is LIFE? 23 



propriate stimuli, or conditions, or from sonic unexplained 

 peculiarity. This proves those philosophers to be in er- 

 ror who imagine that molecular change is essential to 

 life. The seed which has been held in the hand of an 

 Egyptian mummy perhaps for thousands of years, re- 

 tains the vital power, and may sprout under favorable 

 conditions. The wheel animalcule (Rotatoria) has been 

 dried and resuscitated many times in succession, and 

 Messrs. Drysdale and Dollinger have proved that the 

 germs of Infusoria cannot be destroyed by the heat of 

 boiling water, but live when the thermometer shows a 

 heat of 300 F. These resisting germs, floating in the 

 air, will soon revive on the accession of moisture. 



13. Death occurs when the cause of life is removed. 

 Life is not synonymous with spirit, but is peculiar spir- 

 itual influence on matter ; the result of the union of cre- 

 ated spirits and elemental matter. When the spiritual 

 essence ceases to act upon the matter of the organism 

 we say the body is dead, and then disintegration and 

 chemical decomposition succeed. There is a two-fold 

 death the death of the organism as a whole, called so- 

 matic, or bodily death, and molecular death, or the loss 

 of vital activity in the molecules of the body. Life be- 

 gins in a single molecule of bioplasm, and is propagated 

 as a force more or less modified from molecule to mole- 

 cule, or from cell to cell, as flame proceeds from one 

 combustible substance to another, or as magnetism is 

 disseminated by the action of a single magnet through 

 one bar of steel after another. 



Molecular death is a continual phenomenon of life 

 during its activity. It is arrested in dormant life, and 





