THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 55 



haps even more hermetically, their life in this contracted 

 state is only supported by their organs still retaining suffi- 

 cient fluid to prevent existence from being extinguished. 

 When they are really dry and dead, not even a semblance 

 of resurrection is possible. To resuscitate a mummy is a 

 threefold absurdity — physical, physiological, and meta- 

 physical. 



Physical, because those who have seen a mummy could 

 never imagine that tissues so ruined by desiccation can 

 recover their appearance and properties under the influ- 

 ence of moisture. 



Physiological, because organs so changed could not take 

 on their functions again. 



And finally metaphysical, because if a small quantity of 

 Avater could restore to a mummy all the intangible springs 

 of life, it would be the coping-stone of the most incom- 

 prehensible materialism. The phenix only lives as a myth, 

 and the dead no longer issue from their tombs at the voice 

 of Elijah. 



Very naturally those physiologists whom one has seen, 

 in imitation of Dujardin, liken microscopic animalcules to 

 morsels of living gelatine, hailed the doctrine of palin- 

 genesis. 



But, on the other hand, those men who have made 

 themselves illustrious by their immortal lalwurs Avitli the 

 microscope, such as Ehrenberg and Diesing, reduced this 

 inconceivable hypothesis to nullity. The former, in a com- 

 munication to me, with one stroke of his pen characterized 

 the error of the philosophers whom we are opposing. " They 

 only resuscAtate ," he said, "animals which are not dead." 



But although belief in revivification has vanished in the 

 presence of reason and experiment, it must be admitted 

 that there were a host of extraordinary circumstances. 



