LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

LIFE, WHAT IS IT?

IN treating a subject concerning which so little is positively known the writer proposes to present a few significant facts and considerations.

Let us inquire concerning some of the general characteristics of that incomprehensible and invisible element or manifestation which we call life.

Life in its essence is a mystery; but the earth teems with numberless varieties of living creatures, and the phenomena of life are so common that we look upon them as part of the course of nature. We are not inclined to inquire concerning life's origin and extent except in meditative moments, or when impelled to serious thought by the vicinage of death. Then we are often disposed to inquire whence? whither? But when we attempt to push our inquiries into the nature of life we may read over the portals of its temple, "Walk softly here," for the ground on which we tread is under thickest mystery.

Why do we say of one that he is alive, and of another that he is dead? What is life?-and also its opposite, death?

For present purposes I assume that life is a manifestation of the vital energy or principle which preserves health and strength in living beings.

But in one sense this assumption does not bring us a just conception of the proper answer. I however assume that a vital energy or principle exists, though well aware that biologists are in dispute upon this very point.

Dr. H. C. Bastian (p. 56, "Beginnings of Life ") says:"Two fundamentally opposite doctrines have been maintained again and again as to the nature of life, under one or the other of which all the views ever promulgated on this subject may be ranged. According to the one school, life is to be regarded as the principle or cause of organization; and, according to the other, life is the product or effect of organization."

H. C. Bastian and others regard life as the effect of organization.

Hunter, Huxley, and many other eminent physiologists regard life as the cause rather than the consequence of organization.

If life is merely the result of organization, then men and animals are simply organized machines brought together by and under the complete control of the mechanical forces of

nature.

Chemists have labored to produce living matter, but so far have utterly failed in these endeavors. Organic matter has been analyzed, and its chemical constituents, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, etc., are well known. But when chemists combine these elements in the same proportions no breath comes, no throbbing heart, no blood circulation; in fact, not the slightest trace of what we distinguish by the name of life.

It should be borne in mind that living protoplasm has not been and cannot be analyzed. A chemist can say that dead protoplasm is compounded of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, etc.; but, when he attempts to analyze living protoplasm, death takes place, and it is only dead protoplasm which he analyzes. What escapes in the passage from life to death cannot be recognized by chemistry, and probably it has no chemical quality.

By using poisons which would destroy all animal life chemists may produce certain substances like those produced in the animal system at normal temperature; or, by using a degree of heat utterly destructive to animal life, something similar has been produced. But in animals these are produced with moderate temperature, and without poisons.

So radically different are the actions of chemicals in the laboratory and the chemical actions in living beings which produce like results. Yet some have asserted that the production of urea by chemists is an indication that life in animal organisms is the result of chemical action or chemical combinations.

Dr. Lionel Beale, the distinguished physiologist and microscopist, writing on this point, says ("Protoplasm, or Matter of Life," p. 270), "All the force, all the heat, all the motion, in the non-living universe is incompetent to develop a living monad; and this the physicists know. In their view of the construction of living beings they ignore the fact of the existence of an already existing organism; but this existence is absolute. They ingeniously invest attendant circumstances and external conditions in the garments of causes, and persuade the public that these are all in all.

They then ignore, or deny, the inheritance of life, which is all in all, and without which all matter, all force, all possible

attendant circumstances and external agencies are as nothing."

Huxley admits that carbonic acid, water, and ammonia cannot combine to produce protoplasm, or the matter of life, unless the principle of life presides over the operation. Even Hæckel, the monistic naturalist, admits that life cannot be produced by chemistry.

However, there is chemical action in the animal system, and the work of waste and repair of the animal tissues constantly goes on. But no chemist has ever been able to produce the simplest animal organism, much less intelligence, the distinguishing trait of all higher forms of animal life. Chemists may analyze and combine as they will, but something is still wanting. The germ of life must be implanted before the living active machine can be set in motion.

We confess that from the teachings of science we have no knowledge of life separate from matter; for all manifestations of life we have ever seen, whether animal or vegetable, have been connected with matter. But that is by no means proof that life cannot exist separate from matter, or that the vital principle is not something different from any material substance, and resident in matter, but not of it, and placed there by the eternal and life-giving intelligence.

Science gives us no positive light in regard to the origin of intelligence, though theories are abundant enough. Here, as in regard to the origin of life, we may "walk softly," for more is unknown than is known.

Yet I have no sympathy with those, on the one hand, who tell us it is irreverent to pry into the secrets of nature, for nature does not reveal her secrets; nor do I sympathize with those metaphysicians who tell us that we have no right to study what cannot be comprehended by our reason.

The

one would shut from us all matters of faith in the unseen; and the other would prevent us from investigating whatever might tend to make us distrust authority in spiritual things.

The Duke of Argyll has, in substance, said, "When men tell me that I must not search for truth in a certain direction the fair inference is that they fear I may discover valuable truth hidden there."

When we try to describe life in the abstract we cannot do it with any degree of fulness or clearness.

Herbert Spencer defines life to be "The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations."

His definition has been much praised; but it does not seem to convey a full and complete meaning, for life seems to comprise more than a "continuous adjustment" alone. The life principle appears to be the cause of this "continuous adjustment," for, if the life principle does not precede, this "continuous adjustment" never takes place. This adjustment seems to be the product or consequence of the

life principle. With death this "continuous adjustment"

ceases. In fact the ceasing of this "continuous adjustment" is what we call death.

Grindon says that Spencer's definition is not that of life itself, but it merely describes certain "phenomena of life.” “A definite and clear definition of life itself is yet to be given."

The difficulty in defining the word "life" arises from the different conceptions of what life really is. One conception may be called the metaphysical, and another the physiological. Spencer's definition is chiefly physiological; but it seems to me that the metaphysical view which arises from our own consciousness should be considered as important as the physiological. These differences of opinion doubtless arise from different points of observation.