CHAPTER II 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES OF LIVING MATTER 



SEVERAL causes tend to augment the mystery inseparable 

 from our thoughts concerning living matter. One of these 

 is due to the common notion of the existence of a separate entity 

 or vital principle, called 'life' — a notion which, strangely enough, 

 has been fostered by many celebrated physiologists and philoso- 

 phers such as Bichat, De Blainville, Richerand, ScheUing, and 

 even Herbert Spencer, by their attempts to find a definition of 

 'life.' 



But all things possessing qualities — that is everything in the 

 universe — has a ' life ' of its own, varying though it may in rank 

 and relative supremacy. All bodies in nature are in fact known to 

 us only as aggregates of such and such properties. They are, 

 however, divided into two great classes — the living and the 

 not-living — according as they do or do not possess a small group 

 of certain qualities. These differentiating qualities are those which 

 are generalised and included under the abstract name 'life.' We 

 must not be blinded, however, by the use of such a word ; we 

 must not fall into the old error of supposing that because by a 

 process of generalisation we have conceived a mere abstract notion 

 to which we attach the name ' life,' that there is anything existing, 

 of and by itself, answering to this term. No, each material body 

 has properties of its own — properties which are due to its mole- 

 cular constitution — and which make it what we know it to be. 

 Certain of the objects around us, for instance, have a power of 

 assimilation, of growing, of developing, and of reproducing their 

 kind. Bodies possessing such properties have been arbitrarily 

 named ' living ' bodies, and the word ' life ' has been used as a 

 mental symbol connoting the sum total of the properties which 

 distinguish such bodies from the members of the other great class 

 whose representatives do not possess them. These properties are 

 undoubtedly of a much higher and more subtle nature than those 

 of not-living matter, but it should be distinctly understood that 



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