OF LIVING MATTER 23 



death is quickened and Life appears, but in which matter merely 

 changes its place and form." 



Another cause tending to complicate popular conceptions con- 

 cerning ' life ' is what we may call an anthropomorphic fallacy — 

 a tendency, that is, to endow Uving things with such attributes as 

 we may recognise in ourselves, or at least in higher members of 

 the animal kingdom generally. The more we look to the higher 

 forms of life the more apt are we to be bhnded as to the real and 

 essential nature of the phenomena taking place, owing to the great 

 complexity which has arisen in the various functions of these 

 higher forms step by step with the increasing compUcacy of 

 their organisation. 



The more highly developed an organism has become, the more 

 has specialisation been brought about in the functions of its several 

 parts, and (in almost the same proportion) the more, as Schelling 

 has said, has the all become welded into a whole. The greater 

 the degree of interdependence existing between the actions of 

 its several parts, the more is the well-being of the entire organism 

 interfered with by damage occurring to any one of these principal 

 parts. Through the intervention, for the most part, of the nervous 

 system and the vascular system, this individuality of the entire 

 organism is carried to the most marked extent in the highest 

 vertebrata, so that the ' life ' of one of these creatures — regarded 

 as a whole, or sum total of phenomena — differs almost as widely 

 as it is possible from that of some of the lowest animals on the 

 one hand, and from that of plants on the other. Their mode of 

 death also is quite different. And as with 'life,' so is it with 

 ' death,' we are perhaps too apt to form our notions concerning 

 each from what we see taking place in man himself and in the 

 higher living things. 



Many people apparently never reflect upon the striking differences 

 which are presented, in this respect, by the lowest animals as well 

 as by the members of the vegetable kingdom. In man we find 

 a fully developed and excessively complex organisation, in the 

 working of which, as in that of any ordinary but extremely 

 complex piece of machinery, there is seen to be the closest 

 interdependence between the actions of the several parts. The 

 action of some parts are more essential, that of others less essential 

 to the action of the machine as a whole. An interference with 

 the revolution of some central wheel may suffice instantly to 



