8 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
Sir Charles Morgan, in 1818, defines life as ‘‘ the sum 
total of functions which any individual can perform ;”’ 
but he also adds, that organised beings have no property 
such as irritability essentially distinct from those of 
inorganised matter. He is, therefore, the precursor of 
the more modern physio-chemical school of physiologists 
which denies that the living matter is in a state of 
combination sw generis. 
De Blainville defines life as ‘‘the twofold internal 
‘‘movement of composition and decomposition at once 
general and continuous.’ ‘To this Herbert Spencer* 
objects as being too narrow, inasmuch as it excludes 
nervous and muscular functions, but I do not think with 
justice, because the decomposition and recomposition of 
living matter is involved in these functions just as much 
as in nutrition. Herbert Spencer also objects to this 
definition as applying equally to a galvanic battery. To 
this I hkewise demur, because in the latter the chemically 
acting substances are not renewed in their original form 
during its very action, as is the case with vital action. 
So it seems to me this definition comes very near to 
completeness, but makes too little of the external agencies, 
and of the distinction between vital and non-vital actions 
in the individual. 
According to G. H. Lewes, ‘‘ Life is a series of definite 
and successive changes, both of structure and com- 
position, which take place within an individual without 
destroying its identity.” To this Bealet objects that it 
applies only to individuals of the higher orders, while life 
belongs to single white corpuscles or pus corpuscles, and 
when these grow and multiply by subdivision, what 
becomes of their identity? And he adds, that such words 
* Biology, vol. i., p. 60. 
+ Todd and Bowman, vol. i., p. 32. 
