22 FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTIES 



they are as much dependent upon the mere qualities and nature 

 of the material aggregate which displays them, as the properties 

 of a metal or the properties of a crystal are the results of the 

 nature and mode of collocation of the atoms of which such bodies 

 are composed. 



Putting it still more plainly we may say that the phenomena 

 manifested by living things are dependent upon the properties 

 and molecular activities of a particular kind of matter known as 

 protoplasm, just as mental phenomena are dependent upon the 

 properties and molecular activities of nerve-tissues, and just as 

 magnetic phenomena are dependent upon the properties and 

 molecular activities of certain kinds or states of iron. And though 

 generalised conceptions of these several kinds of phenomena have 

 been embodied in the terms ' hfe,' ' mind,' and ' magnetism ' 

 respectively — neither of which corresponds with any independent 

 existence — yet regarded as ultimate facts, we are just as impotent 

 to ' explain ' the relation, or nexus of causation, existing between 

 magnetic phenomena and the one set of molecular activities, as 

 we are to ' explain ' the relation between the phenomena pre- 

 sented by the simplest forms of 'hfe' and the molecular consti- 

 tution and activities of protoplasm. 



As the writer pointed out long ago' the attempted definitions 

 of ' life ' that have been made have been so many generalised 

 statements, more or less distinctive, concerning the phenomena 

 presented by living things, one of the best of which is that given 

 by Herbert Spencer as " The continuous adjustment of internal 

 relations to external relations." On the other hand according 

 to Schelling, life is the " principle of individuation, or the power 

 which unites a given all into a whole." However unsatisfactory 

 this may be as a definition of life, we cannot fail to recognise that 

 it is an expression of one of the most notable tendencies revealed 

 in all the higher forms of life. 



Philosophically speaking there can be no abrupt line of demar- 

 cation between the living and the not-living, living things being 

 only peculiar aggregates of ordinary matter and of ordinary force, 

 whose constituents, in their separate states, are not possessed of the 

 qualities connoted by the word ' life.' Omnia mutantur : nihil 

 interit. As Dumas has said,° " there is an eternal round in which 



» "The Beginnings of Life," 1872, Vol. i, p. 71. 



' "The Chemical and Physiological Balance of Organic Nature," 1844, 

 (Transln.) p. 48. 



