186 Organization and Life. 



" not to suffer the understanding to jump and fly from particu- 

 lars to remote and most general axioms (such as are termed the 

 principles of arts or things)/' and he adds, " we must not even 

 add wings, but rather lead and ballast to the understanding, to . 

 prevent its jumping or flying, which has not yet been done ; 

 but whenever this takes place we may entertain greater hopes 

 of the sciences/-' Had M. Bouchut followed the Baconian ad- 

 vice he would not have told us that the " three attributes com- 

 mon to everything endowed with life are, (1.) impressibility, or 

 the unconscious faculty of feeling external impressions without 

 any participation of the nervous system; (2.) corpuscular 

 movement, automatic movement, or autocynesy , that is to say, 

 the faculty possessed by the elements of living matter to move 

 themselves in order to form species, and to do this without 

 dependence on the properties of any structure;* (3.) jpromor- 

 jphosis, or faculty of giving to amorphous elements a form de- 

 termined beforehand, and conformable with the type of the 

 species." An "unconscious faculty of feeling" is not intel- 

 ligible : a faculty or facility, for the words are the same in 

 origin and meaning, can be neither conscious nor unconscious, 

 and an unconscious feeling is no feeling at all. In describing 

 the second alleged property of every living thing there is equal 

 confusion. What is meant by the " elements of living matter ?" 

 Are the atoms of oxygen, carbon, and so forth, declared to pos- 

 sess an automatic power, independent of the structure to which 

 they belong, " to move themselves in order to form species " ? 

 " Impressibility" is affirmed to be " an attribute of life which 

 exists in all tissues, which it animates independently of their 

 textures." The physiologist does not know life apart from 

 some living thing, and when a writer addresses us like M. 

 Bouchut he is substituting metaphysical guess-work for scien- 

 tific fact. 



Life, as we know it, consists in actions that are obviously 

 physical, and in operations that bear no analogy to any physical 

 process. It is probably a complete mistake to represent life as 

 controlling or resisting mechanical, chemical, or electrical forces. 

 While an animal lives, its tissues are built up and taken to 

 pieces according to a regulated method which is compatible 

 with its continued existence, but all the physical operations of 

 its life proceed in strict accordance with physical laws. If its 

 albumen does not coagulate at a temperature that causes other 

 albumen to undergo that change, it is not because a mysterious 

 " principle" determines otherwise, but because the chemical 

 conditions of coagulation exist in one case and not in the other. 

 The power of maintaining heat is purely physical, and com- 

 bustion follows the same laws in the body of the man as in the 



* " En dehors de toute propriete de structure." 



