i 882.] 
What is an Organism ? 
657 
specialists, obstinate controversies and much ink-shed may 
ensue before it is settled to which section some particular 
being should be referred. 
Still more difficult is it to distinguish by any universal 
characteristics an organism from a portion of inorganic 
matter. The question is, of course, hardest to deal with 
when the organism is defundt, and we have before us merely 
its fossilised remains. It is not by any means decided 
whether Eozoon Canadense is a something which once lived 
and died, or a mere mineral structure. Sections of meteoric 
stones revealed what to not a few microscopists seemed 
organic forms, and many persons jumped at the conclusion 
that if dead organisms could thus reach our planet through 
the depths of space, so might the “ moss-covered fragment 
of another world,” which is credited with having been, for 
us, the beginning of life. The tyro in palaeontology is often 
puzzled how to distinguish dendritic deposits of purely in- 
organic matter from the impressions of fossil ferns which 
they often closely mimic. The so-called Brownian or pedetic 
movements of certain powdery matters when thrown upon 
the surface of water have seemed to not a few persons 
evidences of life. 
Nay, even when recent animals and plants, or the parts of 
such, are concerned, many well-educated people might be at 
a loss if asked : “ How do you know that this mass of 
matter here before you is or was a living being and not a 
mineral product? Though they would perhaps rarely fail 
to make a correct diagnosis, they would as rarely succeed in 
rendering a right reason for the opinion they had expressed. 
The first attempt at the definition of an organism is due 
to Aristoteles, and until recently it might be pronounced one 
of the most satisfactory on record. He discovered that in a 
plant or an animal, each part had certain duties or functions 
to perform ; that it was, so to speak, a tool, an instrument 
or appliance (organon) for the totality to which it belongs. 
Every such totality, therefore, he named an “ organism,” 
that is, a combination of tools or implements. It is curious, 
as a contributor of the “Journal of Science” hints at,* how 
completely this original meaning of the terms organ, 
organism, and organic, has been obscured and lost sight of. 
But on further research this definition of an organism was 
found to be at fault. Not to speak of certain parts in tire 
higher animals which have become abortive and fulfil no 
function, we have become acquainted with certain low forms 
* Journal of Science, 1882, p. 328. 
