mrs. PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. ope 
all acquainted with its ordinary, obvious manifestations. It would, 
therefore, seem that it should not be difficult to 
find an exact definition. The quest has nevertheless 
baffled the most acute thinkers. Herbert Spencer devoted two chapters 
of his ‘ Principles of Biology’ to the discussion of the attempts at 
definition which had up to that date been proposed, and himself 
suggested another. But at the end of it all he is constrained to admit 
that no expression had been found which would embrace all the 
known manifestations of animate, and at the same time exclude those 
of admittedly inanimate, objects. 
The ordinary dictionary definition of life is ‘the state of living.’ 
Dastre, following Claude Bernard, defines it as ‘ the sum total of the 
phenomena common to all living beings.’! Both of these definitions 
are, however, of the same character as Sydney Smith’s definition 
of an archdeacon as ‘ a person who performs archidiaconal functions.’ 
I am not myself proposing to take up your time by attempting to grapple 
with a task which has proved too great for the intellectual giants 
of philosophy, and I have the less disposition to do so because recent 
advances in knowledge have suggested the probability that the dividing 
line between animate and inanimate matter is less sharp than it has 
hitherto been regarded, so that the difficulty of finding an inclusive 
definition is correspondingly increased. 
As a mere word ‘ life’ is interesting in the fact that it is one of those 
abstract terms which has no direct antithesis; although probably most 
persons would regard ‘ death’ in that light. A little consideration will 
show that this is not the case. ‘ Death’ implies the pre-existence of 
‘life’; there are physiological grounds for regarding death as a pheno- 
menon of life—it is the completion, the last act of life. We cannot speak 
of a non-living object as possessing death in the sense that we speak of 
a living object as possessing life. The adjective ‘ dead’ is, it is true. 
applied in a popular sense antithetically to objects which have never 
possessed life; as in the proverbial expression ‘ as dead as a door-nail.’ 
But in the strict sense such application is not justifiable, since the use 
of the terms dead and living implies either in the past or in the present 
the possession of the recognised properties of living matter. On the 
other hand, the expressions living and lifeless, animate and inani- 
mate, furnish terms which are undoubtedly antithetical. Strictly and 
literally, the words animate and inanimate express the presence or 
absence of ‘ soul’; and not infrequently we find the terms ‘life’ and 
‘soul’ erroneously employed as if identical. But it is 
me nek rs hardly necessary for me to state that the remarks I have 
ne caw" to make regarding ‘life’ must not be taken to apply to 
the conception to which the word ‘soul’ is attached. 
Definition. 
1 La vie et la mort, English translation by W. J. Greenstreet, 1911, p. 54. 
