
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. iti 
may say there is no individual, however low in the scale, 
which has not something physical and chemical in the 
“sum of its functions’ besides the distinctively vital. 
“In every living thing,” says Beale, ‘“‘ there are physio- 
chemical actions which also occur out of the body, and 
vital actions.”* For these reasons the definition of life 
as the sum of the functions of living beings cannot be 
accepted as a definition of life in the abstract. It is 
merely a definition in a collective or general sense of the 
life of particular individuals or species. A similar meaning 
seems to be implied in the statement of Virchow: t+ 
‘““Hvery animal presents itself as the sum of vital unities, 
any one of which manifests all the characteristics of 
life.’ And the above give point to Beale’s remark that 
“the words individual and identity would destroy any 
definition.”” That it applies to individuals, and does not 
discriminate between living and non-living action is also, 
I think, a fatal objection to Herbert Spencer’s definition 
of life. 
To define life in the abstract, we must be able to 
separate what is vital from what is non-vital in functions 
to which both kinds of action contribute. Is this possible 
in the present position of biological science ? 
Does anatomy, human or comparative, enable us to 
point to one or more material anatomical elements whose 
properties are distinctly vital, as contrasted with the 
physical and chemical properties of inanimate bodies ? 
To this the answer is in the affirmative, for if we trace 
back the phylogenic stem of animate nature to its lowest 
and simplest origin, we find as it were the non-living 
dissected away and separated from the hving on a grand 
scale, and with the infinity of detail and variety usual in 
* Protoplasm, 1874, p. 74. 
+ Cellular Pathology, p. 13. 
