178 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
for months in conditions where no respiratory 
exchange with the outer world was possible. 
Becquerel showed that seeds deprived by an air- 
pump of their internal atmosphere and kept for 
a year under mercury, or in nitrogen or carbon 
dioxide, or in a nearly complete vacuum, still retain 
their power of germinating. What is this life 
that sulks and hides itself, but will not die? Life 
is a kind of activity, a series of correlated reactions 
among the members of a well-constituted chemical 
firm, and taking place in what is called a colloidal 
substratum which is to the essential activity of the 
protoplasm as the bed of a river to its flow; but the 
activity can only occur in an appropriate environ- 
ment of air and moisture and the like. So the 
question is, whether the latent condition implies 
a total suspension of vital activities, or “an ex- 
tremely sluggish, intracellular, anzrobic life?” 
There is a blockade, but does the firm entirely 
suspend operations, or does it keep going in a small 
way, which we cannot detect? 
The great French physiologist Claude Bernard, 
to whom we owe the term “ latent life,’’ maintained, 
in his classic work on “ The phenomena of life com- 
mon to plants and animals,” that life is a rela- 
tion between organism and environment, and that 
in dry seeds and desiccated animals it is only poten- 
tial. “It exists ready to manifest itself if appro- 
priate external conditions are available, but there 
is not the slightest manifestation of it if these con- 
ditions are lacking.” Living is not attenuated 
