PROXIMATE DEFINITION OF LIFE. 65 



consciousness implies many component changes. In 



this respect too, however, it must be admitted that the 

 distinction between animate and inanimate is not precise. 

 No mass of dead matter can have its temperature altered, 

 without at the same time undergoing an alteration in bulk, 

 and sometimes also in hygrometric state. An inorganic 

 body cannot be oxidized, without being at the same time 

 changed in w^eight, colour, atomic arrangement, temperature, 

 and electric condition. And in some vast and mobile aggre- 

 gates like the sea, the simultaneous as well as the successive 

 changes displayed, outnumber those going on in an animal. 

 IsTevertheless, speaking generally, a living thing is distin- 

 guished from a dead thing, by the multiplicity of the changes 

 at any moment taking place in it. Add to which, that by 

 this peculiarity, as by the previous one, not only is the vital 

 more or less clearly marked off from the non-vital ; but 

 creatures possessing high vitality are marked off from those 

 possessing low vitality. It needs but to contrast the many 

 organs co-operating in a mammal, with the few in a polype, 

 to see that the actions wdiich are progressing together in the 

 body of the first, as much exceed in number the actions pro- 

 gressing together in the body of the last, as these do those 

 in a stone. As at present analyzed, then, Life consists of 

 simultaneous and successive changes. 



Continuing the comparison, we next find that vital changes, 

 both visceral and cerebral, diff'er from other changes in their 

 heterogeneity. Neither the simultaneous acts nor the serial 

 acts, which together constitute the process of digestion, are 

 at all alike. The states of consciousness comprised in any 

 ratiocination are not repetitions of each other, either in com- 

 position or in modes of dependence. Inorganic processes, on 

 the other hand, even when like organic ones in the number 

 of the simultaneous and successive changes they involve, are 

 unlike them in the homogeneity of these changes. In the 

 case of the sea, just referred to, it is observable that count- 

 less as are the actions at any moment going on, they are 



