ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
25 
“ Poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind 
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind.” 
But we cannot be wise beyond our powers of observation ; and 
therefore we must yield to our own weakness, and fairly confess 
that this part of our subject is, in its principles, altogether beyond 
our depth. 
Still the effects of those agencies are as open to our notice as the 
most familiar piece of matter, upon which their effects can be dis- 
played ; and if I cannot tell what life is, it is very easy for me to 
inform you what life does. 
When the signs of life are carefully considered, it will be found 
that they are reducible to five ; or, that there are five properties 
which are peculiar to living beings, and by which, therefore, they 
are distinguished. 
Of these the first is, the property of the living principle to resist, 
within certain limits, the operation of the ordinary laws of matter . 
Physical agents exert over inorganic bodies a constant and irre- 
sistible influence. Air, moisture, heat, produce in all such bodies 
incessant changes, subverting the closest union between their in- 
tegral particles, and forming them into combinations entirely new ; 
and, however trifling the amount, not even a breath of wind can 
pass along the surface of the earth without altering, in some de- 
gree, the proportions of the bodies with which it comes in con- 
tact ; and not a drop of rain can fall upon a stone without carrying 
away some portion of its substance. This effect is forcibly, though 
rather ludicrously, exemplified in the great toe of the bronze statue 
of St. Peter at Rome, which, in the course of centuries, has been 
worn down to less than half of its original size by the successive 
kisses of the faithful. 
The power of the superior animals, and especially man, to resist 
high degrees of temperature, at first discovered by accident, and 
afterwards made the subject of direct experiment, is very extra- 
ordinary. Drs. Fordyce, Blagdon, and others, exposed themselves 
in an oven heated above the point to which water boils, as high 
as 264°. The heat of their bodies never rose more than one or two 
degrees above the usual temperature. At the end of twelve 
minutes they left the oven, very much fatigued, but no otherwise 
disordered. 
By the same power the living body is capable of bearing with 
impunity intense degrees of cold. In climates and seasons when 
the thermometer indicates a degree of cold much below zero, the 
temperature of the body continues almost unchanged, and all the 
functions of life go on with impunity. 
Other facts indicate a controlling power equally characteristic. 
Seeds endowed with vitality remain unchanged under circum- 
VOL. XII. D 
