24 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 



Beddoes will make it the corival of the mathematical 

 sciences in demonstrative evidence. I think it a matter 

 of doubt whether, during the period of its supposed 

 infallibility, physiology derived more benefit from the 

 extension, or injury from the misdirection, of its views. 

 Enough of the latter is fresh in recollection to make it 

 but an equivocal compliment to a physiological position, 

 that it must stand or fall with the corpuscular philosophy, 

 as modified by the French theory of chemistry. Yet 

 should it happen (and the event is not impossible, nor the 

 supposition altogether absurd,) that more and more de- 

 cisive facts should present themselves in confirmation of 

 the metamorphosis of elements, the position that life con- 

 sists in assimilation would either cease to be distinctive, 

 or fall back into the former class as an identical propo- 

 sition, namely, that Life, meaning by the word that sort 

 of growth which takes place by means of a peculiar or- 

 ganization, consists in that sort of growth which is peculiar 

 to organized life. Thirdly, the definition involves a still 

 more egregrious flaw in the reasoning, namely, that of 

 cum hoc, ergo propter hoc (or the assumption of causation 

 from mere coexistence) ; and this, too, in its very worst 

 form. For it is not cum hoc solo, ergo propter hoc, which 

 would in many cases supply a presumptive proof by in- 

 duction, but cum hoc, et plurimis aliis, ergo propter hoc ! 

 Shell, of some kind or other, is common to the whole order 

 of testacea, but it would be absurd to define the vis vita 

 of testaceous animals as existing in the shell, though we 

 know it to be the constant accompaniment, and have 

 every reason to believe the constant effect, of the specific 

 life that acts in those animals. Were we (arguments 



