304 NATURE AND. LIFE. 



transformations from small to great, and vice versa. In 

 other words, Leibnitz sees everywhere eternal and incor- 

 ruptible germs of life, which neither perish at all nor be- 

 gin. What does begin and perish is the organic machine 

 of which these germs compose the original activity : the 

 elementary gearing of the machine is broken apart, but 

 not destroyed. This is the first view held by Leibnitz. He 

 has another, too, conceiving of generation as a progress of 

 life through degrees ; he can conceive of death also as a 

 gradual regress of the same principle, that is to say, that 

 in death life withdraws little by little, just as it came for- 

 ward little by little in generation. Death is no sudden 

 phenomenon, nor instantaneous evanishing it is a slow 

 operation, a " retrogradation," as the Hanoverian philoso- 

 pher phrases it. When death shows to us, it has been a 

 long time wearing away the organism, though we have not 

 perceived it, because " dissolution at first attacks parts in- 

 visibly small." Yes, death, before it betrays itself to the 

 eye by livid pallor, to the touch by marble coldness, before 

 chaining the movements and stiffening the blood of the 

 dying person, creeps with insidious secrecy into the small- 

 est and most hidden points of his organs and his humors. 

 Here it begins to corrupt the fluids, to disorganize the 

 tissues, to destroy the equipoise and endanger the harmony. 

 This process is more or less lingering and deceitful, and, 

 when we note the manifest signs of death, we may be sure 

 that the work lacked no deliberate preparation. 



These ideas of Leibnitz, like most of the conceptions 

 of genius, waited long after the time of their appearance 

 for confirmation by demonstrative experiment. Before his 

 day, bodies were dissected only for the sake of studying 

 in them the conformation and normal arrangement of the 

 organs. When this study was once completed, science 

 took up the methodical inquiry into the changes produced 

 in the different parts of the body by diseases. Not until 



