294 Professor Owen on Article VL [^^jo^li,MSTim!'^ 
TV. — Professor Owen on Article VL, No. III., of the 'Monthly 
Mic7'oscoj>ical Journal.' 
In reference to the remarks (p. 178, op. cit.) by Professor Beale 
(of whose labours in the advancement of our common science I 
gladly here avail myself to express my deep and grateful sense), 
permit me to observe that there are organisms (Vibrio, Rotifer, 
Macrohiotus, &c.) which we can devitalize and revitalize — devive and 
revive — many times. As the dried animalcule manifests no pheno- 
menon suggesting any idea contributing to form the complex one 
of " life " in my mind, I regard it to be as completely lifeless as is 
the drowned man whose breath and heat have gone, and whose 
blood has ceased to circulate. In neither dead body, however, is 
there rest : the constituent force-centres (P. B.'s " material atoms ") 
are at work : a stagnant force-centre is to my mind inconceivable — 
• a contradiction in terms. The change of work consequent on 
drying or drowning forthwith begins to alter relations or "com- 
position," and, in time, to a degree adverse to resumption of the 
vital form of force, a longer period being needed for this effect 
ill the Eotifer, a shorter one in the Man, still shorter, it may be, in 
the Amoeba. 
Before continuing the analogical argument, I stop to note an 
objection which may be anticipated from P. B. The dried animal- 
cule and drowned mammal, not too far decomposed to respond to 
the means of stimulating resumption of vital actions, he may say, are 
not dead : their " soul " or " life " — animus or anima, the " vital 
spark, principle, ' breath of life,' &c., has not departed from them." 
" The power of revitalizing is possible only so long as such abstrac- 
tion lies latent in the sum of force-centres termed ' body.' " " When 
a drowned man is revived, his soul had not left the body," &c. For 
a little while such objection will pass and serve a purpose. 
To resume. My remark, that " si eel resists much longer the 
surrounding decomposing agencies," P. B. characterizes by a term 
imputing a certain weakness of mind in the remarker, such as 
n}ight call up a smile of compassion or contempt, according to the 
idiosyncrasy of the imputer. What concerns the present question 
is that P. B. virtually, and I believe unawares, denies the truth 
of the remark. For example, when P. B. affirms that " you can 
magnetize and unmagnetize steel as many times as you like" 
(p. 179), I would not stigmatize it as "a naive remark," but, 
in view of our common aim, I affirm it to be untrue. If st'^el 
resisted the surrounding decomposing agencies for ever, and not 
merely "for a much longer time," it might be magnetized and 
unmagnetized as many times as is conceivable, or as P. B. " would 
like." The contrary is evinced, by the fact that our planet exhibits 
