182 DEFINITIONS. 



16. Particles of matter when collected together in a 

 mass of any degree of size or compactness form a body, 

 which may either be organic or inorganic. 



17. An inorganic body is an inert or brute mass of 

 matter, of which the component particles are collected to- 

 gether by juxta-position alone. Such bodies are said to 

 have never lived, and their proper arrangement is as yet 

 unknown. 



18. An organic or organized body is a mass of matter 

 of which the component molecules are or have been in 

 motion on being collected together by intus-susception. 

 Such a body is said to live or to have lived. 



19. By the term life we would express that faculty 

 which certain combinations of material particles possess, 

 of existing for a certain time under a determinate form, 

 and of drawing while in this state into their composition, 

 and assimilating to their own nature, a part of the sub- 

 stances which may surround them, and of restoring 

 the same again under various forms. This life must 

 not be confounded, as it has too often been, with the 

 life of an immaterial intelligent being, which is totally 

 distinct, and seems to be nothing else than a name given 

 to the duration of its existence or happiness. It is there- 

 fore only to the first mentioned faculty that the observa- 

 tions immediately following ought to be supposed to 

 relate. 



20. How this faculty is acquired, what is its immediate 



