56 LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 
is it thus possible to restore life to a living 
thing, once it has been pronounced dead? 
Surely, life and death are but relative terms, 
and the two glide into one another by imper¬ 
ceptible degrees. Yet there is all the difference 
in the world between a living creature and a 
dead one! 
Prof. Chunder Bose has proved that a certain 
“spasm” occurs at the moment of death, ac¬ 
companied by one of an electrical nature, in 
certain plants studied by him. He says: 
“A time comes when, after an answer to a 
supreme shock, there is a sudden end of the 
plant’s power to give any further response. 
This supreme shock is the shock of death. Even 
in this crisis, there is no immediate change 
in the placid appearance of the plant. Droop¬ 
ing and withering are events which occur long 
after death itself. How does the plant, then, 
give this last answer? In man, at the critical 
moment, a spasm passes through the whole 
body, and similarly in the plant I find that a 
great contractile spasm takes place. This is 
accompanied by an electrical spasm also. In 
the script of the death recorder the line, that 
up to this point was being drawn, becomes sud¬ 
denly reversed, and then ends. This is the last 
answer of the plant. 
“These, our mute companions, silently grow¬ 
ing beside our door, have now told us the tale 
of their life-tremulousness and their death- 
spasm in script that is as inarticulate as they. 
May it not be said that this, their story, has 
a pathos of its own beyond any that we have 
conceived?” (Lecture before the Royal In¬ 
stitution of Great Britain, May 29, 1914.) 
