A FEW REMARKS 
ON 
" &JF ILJtfHB" 
BY 
S. II. DICKSO.V, VI. IK 
PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OR 
AN ASSOCIATION OF GENTLEMEN. 
TEFORE WHOM THEY' WERE READ. 
CHARLESTON: 
OBSERVER OFFICE PRESS. 
1843. The Principle of life. 
The subject of tet-nightSs discussion-intricate, entangled, 
mysterious, incomprehensible-is one of the very last which 
I should have selected as a theme. At bidding dS" Tift? 
nevertheless, I plunge headlong into the profound and 
turbid inquiry, with very little hope of bringing up a pearl, 
however certain I may be of losing my breath in the vasty 
deep, and lacerating my fingers with the rough shells that 
contain the treasures sought by the diver. 
" If," says Aristotle, quoted by Barclay, " the knowledge of 
things becoming and honorable be held deservedly in high 
estimation, and if there be any species of knowledge more 
exquisite than another, either on account of its accuracy or of 
the objects to which it relates being more excellent or more 
wonderful, we should not hesitate to pronounce the history of 
the Animating Principle justly entitled to hold the first rank." 
The belief in a definite " principle of life," thus announced, 
was in some form or other universal until of late days.- 
Whether material, etherial, or spiritual, it was assumed as a 
necessary jact, and indeed interwove itself with the current 
religious opinions so completely, that when Lawrence, the 
popular Lecturer of the London College, first denied it, he 
was denounced as an Infidel and an Atheist, and his Work 
laid under absolute sentence of outlawry. Now we can 
scarcely find any one among the more recent authorities who 
does not fully agree with him-and his prohibited book is 
mercilessly plundered without a syllable of acknowledgement. 
What is meant by the phrase Principle of Life ? I will 
jive you a few of the definitions offered in modern times- 4 
premising that this " term Principle," as Mayo remarks, ''has 
been generally employed-as the letters of the Alphabet are 
by Algebraists-to denote an unknown element, which, 
when thus expressed, is more conveniently analyzed"-or, 
as I should prefer to say, examined in its several relations. 
Willis attributes all living actions to the " Calidum innatum," 
as he phrases it-" a material element of an igneous nature" 
-and fortifies his opinion by quoting in its favor some of the 
highest names of antiquity, Hippocrates, Democritus, Epi- 
curus, and Pythagoras. 
'St liger and Fernel have imagined a superior Calidum 
Innatum as the Principle of Life-not the material igii«<fus 
element of Willis, but "a more divine heat, spiritual, aerial, 
etherial, or composed of something elementary or etherial." 
Harvey, the discoverer of the Circulation, bluntly maintains 
that " the Blood is the animating principle or the substance, 
of which the anima, or life, is only the act." John Hunter, 
the most eminent example of " patient labor," after examining 
this subject with the most pains-taking and persevering at- 
tention, arrives at the conclusion that " there is a principle 
of hie connected with all the parts of a living body, solid as 
well as fluid-a materia vitae diffusa. Abernethy endors< s 
this-view--'My mind." he says, "rests at. peace in thinking 
on the subject of Life, as Mr. Hunter has taught:" but he 
dwells with no little emphasis on what he calls the correspon- 
dence between "the phenomena of Electricity and of Life"- 
a hint caught at and labored much by Wilson Philip-and 
recently mummbled in the most myterious and significant way 
by the Mesmerists.* Cuvier tells us. " Life consists in the 
sum total of the functions." Bichat affirms it to be " 1'ensem- 
bledes functions qui resistent a la mort." In the same spirit, 
an old writerf points it out as " illud putredini contrarium." 
And'Carlyle, speaking ironically of " some small soul." has 
* M .tor's Ph vs 
* JurtkenJJlumenbach. 5 
the same idea, "it saves salt." Lawrence maintains it to be 
" merely the active state of the animal structure." Carpenter 
defines it " the state of action peculiar to an organized body 
or organism." He intends, he says, " to designate rathet the 
state or condition of the being exhibiting those actions than 
the actions themselves." He saw that his predecessor, Law- 
rence, whom he follows slavishly but ungratefully, had left 
unprovided for, the condition of " dormant vitality," in w hich 
living action is suspended. Sir Humphrey Davy* taught that 
" Life consisted in a perpetual scries of corpuscular changes." 
Observe, I pray you, before we proceed any further, the ex- 
treme confusion made by these philosophers in mass between 
the vital actions and the vital principle-between the phe- 
nomena of life and the cause of this phenomena. " Life is a 
forced state," cries Brown. " Life," echoes Rush, " is the 
effectof certain stimuli acting upon the excitability and sensibili- 
ty" ^he elephant is thus placed firmly enough on the back 
of the tortoise-but when we ask what is the force, of Brovv n, 
and whence the "excitability and sensibility," of Rush, we 
are scarcely satisfied with a reference to "stimuli," which 
are incapable of affecting any form*o?matter unless previously 
endowed with the very properties which manifest the living 
condition. 
Some of the confusion on which I am commenting, resides 
doubtless in the minds of the authors quoted-some of it 
is to be attributed to the imperfection of the French and 
English languages, in both of which the same word Life- 
la Vie-is used to express the cause and the effect. The 
Greeksf used the term fvxy to denote the cause of the 
vital phenomena-to express the effect of that cause. 
We need this distinction. 
" Life," argues Lawrence, "presupposes organization, as 
the movements of a watch presuppose the wheels, levers, and 
* Good's Book of Nature, p. 102. 
t Barclay. 6 
Other mechanism of the instrument." It is indeed true that 
the movements of a watch presuppose mechanism, and the 
phenomena of Life presuppose a specified organization 
through which they must be manifested but it is equally 
true that without the principle of elasticity in the main spring 
of the former, and the " vital principle" in the tissues of the 
latter, there would be no " movement"-no " phenomena." 
Reil,and after him Rudolphi,treat of it as a "subtle material 
superadded to the organism, making an original and essential 
difference in the form and composition of organic bodies."- 
Yet Reil speaks of Life as depending on this specific differ- 
ence of composition and form. MuherPbys. 
Broussais regarding contractility as " the fundamental, 
property of the organic tissues," speaks of "the vital power 
or force as a first cause,* which creates that property and then 
employs it as an instrument." 
Prout, going back to the very Archaeus of Stahl, announces 
it as " an ultimate principle," " an organic agent," "endowed 
by the Creator with a faculty little short of intelligence, by 
means of which it the organism with which it is 
connected." 
Muller describes it as " a principle-or imponderable mat- 
ter-which is in action in the substance of the term-enters 
into the composition of the matter of this germ, and imparts 
to organic combinations properties which cease at death. 
He denies that there is any more obscurity in the physiologi- 
cal views of this subject than in the philosophical doctrines 
concerning Light, Heat, and Electricity. 
I know not how better to " define my own position"-to 
express my own views as to this controversy, than thus: 
Life-Vitality-the Vital Principle-the cause of living 
action-is a primary and peculiar property of certaiu forms of 
matter-a property with which they are originally endowed. 
It is not as Artstotle taught, and Harvey and Willis believed. 
Page 26 7 
a distinct internal element superadded to the structure di the 
body-nor a new substance as Girtanner suggests, perhaps 
Oxygen-nor a subtle something diffused through the solids 
and fluids-Materia Vitae diffusa, as Hunter and Abernethy 
have argued-nor Electricity as the latter hints, and Wilson 
Philip thinks not improbable-nor a presiding genius, an 
Archaeus, an almost or quite intelligent agent, as Stahl and 
Front believe-nor a mere pre-established harmony, as Aris- 
toxa*wet Leibnitz, and Lusac maintain-nor the product of 
organization, as Lawrence, Pritchard, Holland, Mayo, and so 
many others contend-nor is it to be found as Cuvier, Rich- 
eraud,and Carpenter intimate, rather darkly I think, in the 
tout ensemble of the functions or any thing else-to borrow 
the Parliamentary phrase of Joseph Hume, " the sum tottle of 
the whole." 
I find a Supreme Being absolutely necessary in philosophy, 
as Robespiere did in social life-however philosophers and 
politicians may be annoyed by the idea.* I cannot imagine 
Vitality to be the result of any constitution, or arrangement, 
or composition of the structures to which it is found to be- 
long. It is a property with which they are gifted by the 
great source of all powers, and is so far independent of such 
composition or organization, that it not only connects itself 
with conditions of structure or constitution, infinitely varied- 
nay, absolutely contrasted-but may be withdrawn, leaving 
all those conditions, so far as we are aware, unaltered. Let 
us humbly acknowledge that of this principle, in the abstract, 
we know nothing, and in all likelihood shall remain forever 
ignorant. He only who possesses within himself this mys- 
terious attribute, and who of his infinite power and benevo- 
lence has communicated it to a part of his creation, can fully 
comprehend its nature and its essence. 
The very simplest of its manifestations are inexpressibly 
difficult to understand or account for; and as we proceed in 
* "'fife commence^ m'embeter avec ton Etre Supreme," said one of 
hjs cotemporaries to the Man of Terror. 8 
^he inquiry, we are filled with a deep conviction that there 
is nothing in the vast storehouse of nature more calculated 
to awaken intense curiosity, to invite close investigation, and 
to give rise to solemn contemplation, than the construction 
and movements of a living body, fearfully indeed and won- 
derfully made, but still more fearfully and wonderfully en- 
dowed with almost infinite capacities for action, for enjoy- 
ment, and for suffering. 
There are two qualities or properties which seem to be 
essentially and invariably connected with the presence of the 
Vital Principle, and infallible proofs of its active condition 
These are motion-or rather motivity-the power of motion 
-contractility ;* and the capacity of self-protection by 
positive resistance to,'or re-action against the influence of 
agents applied externally. I say externally, for 1 deny the 
correctness of Carpenter's view of this matter, when he de- 
clares that "the changes exhibited by any living being have 
one manifest tendency-the preservation of its existence as 
a perfect structure." Quite the reveise! however it may 
resist external agencies-all its internal movements and 
changes tend ultimately and with unerring certainty to its 
own destruction-it must inevitably wear out and die. 
Inanimate masses of matter, unless impelled by some 
extrinsic force, must remain forever at rest. They possess 
within themselves no energy which can enable them to 
change their place, or even give rise to any alteration in the 
relative position of the atoms which compose them. Every 
particle, on the other hand, which is by any means endowed 
with Vitality; or is made a constituent portion of a living 
body, becomes at once a centre of motion, as it were-an 
impelling agent ;f restless, active, and incessantly employed 
The Monad-the Minute Animalcule-which among millions 
of his fellow's finds abundant space in a single drop of water 
- Ehrenberg's points of life, of which mineral masses are 
* The " only original organic force" of Broussais. 
+ Impetum faciens, 9 
compounded-these, when brought by the microscope within 
the reach of our vision, are known to be alive by their motions 
alone or chiefly. The first vivification of the larger germ is 
perceived in the Punctum Saliens-the organ oi circulation 
which continues to throb and beat until its last pulsation is 
lost in the tranquil stillness of death. The thrusting forth 
of the corculum or sprout is our only test of the living condi- 
tion of the vegetable seed, and difficult as it is to explain how 
plants propel their sap, we know that their juices are in con- 
stant agitation--absorbed by the roots, exposed in the leaves 
to the influences of air and light, and depositing every where 
in their course the materials of growth and increase. 
The second of the essential living properties mentioned 
above-the capacity, namely, to resist the influence of external 
agents-is shewn in a great variety of modes. All living 
bodies enjoy a definite and regulated temperature of their 
own independent of the diffused caloric of the atmosphere. 
The blood of the Mammalia is about 98 deg. Birds are 
warmer than man-reptiles colder. The nose of a dog is 
always cold. The sap of a tree, throughout the severest cold 
of winter not only does not freeze, but retains its own proper 
degree of heat. The heat of a man's body does not rise a 
degree in an oven where meats are baked-nor fall a degree 
in a cellar of ice. A Tenia will live in boiling veal broth. 
Such facts are very numerous. 
The play of chemical affinities, as shown in the ordinary 
processes of decay and decomposition, are efficiently resisted 
by the vital principle-this is indeed so definite a rule that 
there is no certain proof of death except the re-establishment 
of those chemical laws in their operation upon the materials 
of which living bodies are composed, and their conse- 
quent putrefaction. How strangely interesting, in this point 
of view, the condition of Dormant Vitality-suspended ani- 
mation. Seeds* kept in the herbarium of Tournefort more 
* CjA^nat. and Phys.-Life 10 
than one hundred years, were found fertile. Professor Lind- 
ley says that Raspberries were raised from seeds taken from 
the stomach of a man whose skeleton was found thirty feet 
under ground, buried with some coins of the Emperor Ha- 
drian ; whence it is probable that the seeds were 1600 or 1700 
years old. Nay, not only seeds, but Bulbous Roots, found 
enclosed with mummies in their Egyptian envelopes--per- 
haps in a seclusion of 3000 years-produced fac similes of 
their parent plants. Similar stories are told us of the ova of 
many animals. The infusory animalculae seem to be capable 
of an indefinite protraction of dormant life. The Rotifer* 
for example, may be dried so completely as to splinter when 
touched with the point of a needle, and in this state would 
remain perhaps for 1000 years-but revives readily when 
moistened again. Every one knows Dr. Franklin's experi- 
ments on the drowning and revival of flies. Lister and Bonnet 
have seen caterpillars revive that had been so frozen that 
when dropped into a glass they chinked like stones; 
and fish in Northern Europe are transported great distances 
frozen alive. Not to speak of the hybernation of the higher 
orders, which is not a slate of entirely suspended animation, 
the same tenacity is strangely shewn in certain well authen- 
ticated recoveries from drowning-but most fearfully in what 
is called " trance"-a state in which many persons apparent- 
ly dead have been buried alive. Pliny mentions a young man 
of rank, who falling into this condition, was placed upon the 
funeral pile. The heat of the flames revived him ; but he 
perished before his friends could rescue him. The great 
Anatomist, Vesalius, had the inexpressible misfortune to com- 
mence the dissection of a living body, apparently dead. Less 
unhappy was the fate of the Abbe Prevost, who fell apo- 
plectic, but recovered his consciousness too late, alas ! under 
the scalpel. 
Cardinal Somaglia being apparently dead, preparations 
Carpenter ut supra. 11 
tvere made to embalm his body. But the operator had scarce-^ 
ly penetrated into his chest, when the heart was seen to beat. 
The unfortunate patient, returning to his senses, had still suffi- 
cient strength to push away the knife of the Surgeon, jmt too 
late ; for the lung had been mortally wounded, and the patient 
died in a most lamentable manner* Walker's Gatherings 
from Grave Yards, p. 193. 
The industrious Bruhier collected no less than fifty-two 
cases of persons buried alive-four dissected prematurely 
•-fifty-three who recovered after being coffined-and 
seventy-two falsely considered dead. In-onc-ofour own 
.ChuFehes-is The -monument-of Rev. Wm. Tennent, who lay 
three days in his shroud, and was saved from interment 
almost by miracle.^The individual entrusted by the French 
Government with the removal of the dead from the Cemetry 
of Innocents, at Paris, reported that he found many of the 
skeletons in postures that demonstrated their resuscitation 
and partial turning in their coffins. 
Carpenter denies strenuously that there is any necessity 
for supposing a new force, principle, or law, to account for 
vital phenomena, and ascribes them all to the known proper- 
ties of matter, and the familiar laws of mechanical and chem- 
ical affinity, attraction and repulsion, action material and 
passive, reciprocal and catalytic. Such, doubtless, is the 
current tendency of the prevailing philosophy. Every tiling 
is explained by changes of composition. The brain, accord- 
ing to Liebig, is altered chemically by every atom of opium 
taken into the stomach, and a new train of vital actions must 
follow this change in chemical composition and gynute or- 
ganization. Daubeny also favors very decidedly this chemi- 
cal view of Life and its actions. 
/^Shakespeare makes Ceremon in Pericles say- 
' " Death may usurp on Nature many hours 
And yet the fire of life kindle again 
The overpressed spirits. I have heard 
Of an Egyptian had nine hours lien dead,. 
By good appliance was recovered." 12 
But how are we to understand the arrest of action here ? 
The elements, with all their affinities and repulsions, are 
present or in contact; what suspends their influence upon 
eachyther? The favoring contingencies of the presence of 
air and heat, nay all the ordinary and extraordinary agents 
of decomposition are thus defied. 
There is not a little weight in the well known fact that 
none of the products of organic action (Vital Chemistry as 
some have chosen to call it,) have been successfully imita- 
te I in the Laboratory. 1 say none. I am aware that Urea is 
affirmed to have been formed by the processes of inorganic 
action out of the body, but bsides the chances of error in the 
statement of experiments so new and so seldom repeated, we 
must remember, with Muller, that this substance is a pure 
excreiion, and does notin any manner enter into the compo- 
sition of a living body ; it can hence, scarcely with any pro- 
priety, be regarded as organic. Carpenter himself says, that 
though " it may be possible for a Chemist to produce the 
gum or sugar which he finds in the ascending sap of plants, 
he can never hope to imitate the latex or elaborated sap, 
w lich already shows traces of organization and of vital prop- 
erties." Why not ! if their composition results from the 
same familiar processes and laws ? 
1 have hitherto been speaking, as you doubtless have re- 
marked, of the very lowest ol the vital principles-those which 
may be specially indicated as distinguishing living from inani- 
mate matter. These properties constitute indeed the only bases 
for such distinction ; and the most carefully drawn definitions 
foundedWin any other, fail of accuracy and clearness. Thus 
when Kant tells us " that the cause of the particular mode of 
existence of each part of a living body resides in the whole, 
while in dead masses each part contains this cause within it- 
self"-he forgets the beautiful series of crystals, each portion 
of which constitutes as much as, in a living creature, a 
necessiry part of the whole. Others speak of organized 
bodies as exhibiting a symmetry consisting in the correspon- 13 
dence of curved lines or outlines, while inorganic symmetry 
is always rectilinear. 
There is indeed-define it as you will-a wide chasm 
separating the animated from the inanimate portion of created 
things. To all animated nature belong the powers of in- 
crease or growth ; so prominently indeed is this last function 
placed among the vital offices, that Virey contends that "'Life 
is never the property of the individual, but belongs to the 
species," and indeed the act of transmitting it is often both in 
plants and animals the first, last, and only notable purpose of 
existence. 
Inanimate masses, on the contrary, form no species-each 
individual exists separately-increases, or diminishes, or 
changes its form, under the control of external causes exclu- 
sively-grows and changes by external accretion only, and 
by juxtaposition of particles, whether regularly or irregularly, 
whether shapeless lumps or exact crystals. 
It is the melancholy privilege of living beings to die-and 
the very pabulum and stimulant influences which elicit life 
and develope the highest functions of vitality, conduct most 
rapidly and certainly to death. 
Balnea, Vina, Venus, ^orrumpunt ^/orpora^ana, 
Corpora ^ana dabunt Balnea, Vina, Venus. 
' Baths, Woman, Wine, our life sustain, 
Baths, Woman, Wine, our vigour drain. 
Inanimate masses, on the other hand, require no sustenance, 
and if unassisted by violence from without, would, so far as 
we know, endure to all eternity. 
But from the lowest class of organized beings u^^ man, 
who is himself " but a little lower than the angels ofneaven," 
the gradation in the scale of existence is so regular, and the 
steps so slight, that we are even unable to draw with clear- 
ness and precision the line which separates the Animal from 
the Vegetable kingdom, or point out satisfactorily the dis- 
tinction, if any there be, between Animal and Vegetable life. 
Manv* of the Zoophytes, or Plant Animals, wwi^jy^mged 
* Good,-77. 14 
iirst as minerals by Woodward and Beaumont-thenieceived 
by Ray and Lister as vegetables-and are now classed among 
animals rather on account of their chemical properties than 
for any other reason. The Algae indeed are refused admis- 
sion here-Chemistry notwithstanding-by no less authority 
than Ehrenberg.* Strangest of all, Nitzschf tells us that ol 
the same genus, Infusoria, some species as for example 
the Bacillaria Pectinalis, have the characteristics of Plants, 
while others are clearly enough Animals. The uncertainty 
of the chemical tests and their inapplicability here are best 
shewn by the fact that there are at least two vegetables as 
incombustible as minerals-the Fontinella Antipyrectica,| 
used in northernmost Europe for lining chimnies-and the 
Byssus (asbestos,) a moss found in the Swedish copper mines 
which vitrifies when exposed to a red heat. Mirbei, Smith^ 
and Richeraud, offer the following distinction : " That Plants 
derive nourishment from inorganic matter-earths, salts, or 
airs; animals live upon matter already organized."- 
"Plants," says Richeraud prettily enough, "may therefore 
be considered the laboratories in which Nature prepares 
aliments for animals." This striking harmony of relation is 
undoubtedly the rule*; but there' are many exceptions. The 
Earthworm, and numerous other tribes, it is said, live upon 
the mineral kingdom-and Humboldt tells us of some of the 
wretched nations of Southern America, that subsist, at least 
for considerable portions of time, upon clay. Contractility is 
evidently common to both orders; and of obvious locomotion- 
the sensitive plant, the Hedysarum Gyrans, the Orchis, the 
Scal^^ and the Valisneria, are affirmed not only to exhibit 
spontaneous motion of leaf and stem, but the three latter move 
from one place to another, while several instances of animal 
species are known to which Nature has denied both loco- 
* Muller's Phys, in loco. 
t Muller's Phys, in loco. 
+ Good,-78. 
§ y,n II 15 
motion and every mark of consciousness or sensation.* The 
ingenious author of " the Philosophy of Nature,"f observes, 
that " Vegetables have the consciousness or sensation of actu- 
al and present existence ; animals unite to this sense the 
memory of the past; but it belongs to man alone to combine 
these two sentiments with that of the future." This view of 
the matter, however, is more poetical than philosophical. 
Our imagination delights in the idea that all nature is full of 
glad or tranquil consciousness of pleasurable existence. 
" It is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes"- 
Says the contemplative Wordsworth; and our own Bryarit 
sings not less melodiously- 
" Even the green trees 
Partake the deep contentment, as they bend 
To the soft winds ; the sun from the blue sky 
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the » 
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy 
Existence, than the winged plunderer 
That sucks its sweets." 
We know little of the extension of the sentiments through 
the very lowest of the animal orders, though we have it on the 
authority of the universal Shakspeare, that " an oyster may 
be crossed in love." But the doctrine which ascribes to man 
exclusively the feeling of hope or anticipation, must be aban- 
doned when we reflect that all domestic animals expect their 
habitual feeding time with impatience, and press homeward 
with eagerness from abroad-not to dwell upon the prompt- 
ings of instinct, which lead to the building of nests and the 
migrations of the feathered tribes, and the hoardings of food, 
and the conversion by peculiar feeding of the immature 
insect into a Queen Bee. 
By thus regarding the principle of life as expansive, the 
Speculatists have come to confound it, as developed in the 
* Good,-77. Linnasus'class of Vermes. 
* Tourtelle. 16 
higher orders of creation, with the reasoning and moral facul- 
ties-a confusion displayed in the very terms and phrases 
universally employed in discussion. 
The word Psuche-which, as I have said, denoted among 
the Greeks the cause of the phenomena of life-meant indis- 
crimiuately the soul or the vital principle. In Latin, Anima 
-and in English, Soul-are often used in the same way.- 
Thus the Philosophical Poet, 
"Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat Mole tn " 
And our translators of the Bible*-" He breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."- 
Aristotle,! aware of the necessity of nice distinctions here- 
though he does not attempt to make them-asks " under 
which of the categories does the vital principle fall to be 
arranged ? Is it a substance-a quality-or a quantity ? Are 
all soUfS'df tRe-stewfe-or are there different species? Men, 
when they speak of the soul, mean the human soul; but will 
the same language and description apply in all cases ? Or 
would not rather every species require a separate and specific 
definition-as the soul of a horse or dog, the soul of a plant, 
or of a wild beast ?" A modern writer, Grew, proceeding 
upon this train of thought, suggests that " the several species 
of Life seem to be reduceable unto these three-Vegetable 
life, Sense, and Thought." Rush falls headlong into the same 
confusion, and regards Grews' and Aristotles' " several spe- 
cies" of Life as only differences of degree of developement 
or perfection. " Perfect life," he says, " is composed by the 
union of motion, heat, sensation, and thought"-and then goes 
on, " it"-life doubtless-" it may exist without thought, sen- 
sation, or heat-but none of these can exist without motion." 
Among the Physiologists who admit of a separate Principle 
of Life, Abernethy and Dermot alone exhibit any anxiety to 
* Genesis 2: 7, and 2 Cor 15 : 45 " The first man Adam was made a 
living soul." Esdras 16 : 61. Ecclesiastes 3 : 18-21. 
t Barclay. 17 
distinguish from each other the Vita) merely and the Intelit- 
gent principle-the first to be found in vegetables and the 
lower order of animals-the latter met with in man and the 
creatures which approach him nearly. " If," says A., " Phi- 
losophers would once admit that Life was something of an 
invisible and active nature, superadded to organization, they 
would then see equal reason to believe that mind might be 
superadded to life as life is to structure." Dermot, if I under* 
stand him properly, goes further, and supposes three great 
orders of animated nature. 1. The vegetable, and perhaps 
the Zoophyte, endowed with mere life. 2. A rank of animals 
above these, gifted with intelligence, sentient, and capable 
of thought. 3. And lastly man, in whom a third principle is 
paramount-the true soul-the moral agent-responsible- 
capable of wrong and right-of vice and virtue. 
During the prevalence of the opinion that Life and the 
Soul were the same-that the source of animation and intelli- 
gence was a unit-some well-meaning philosophers, in 
their zeal " to vindicate the ways of God to man," were fain 
to take refuge in a hypothesis proposed by Des Cartes, with 
regard to the phenomena of life in the lower animals, viz, 
•'That they have no souls at all-and that all the appearan- 
ces which they exhibit of sense and vitality, are only decepT 
tions ; like the motions of a puppet, the mere effects of mech- 
anism; that being thus mere automata they are utterly indiffer- 
ent to the hardships and cruelties inflicted on them by our 
notice and neglect, and by the nature of circumstances which 
they can neither foresee nor control." 
The received doctrine of the present day, counting among 
its supporters Cuvier, Lawrence, Richeraud, Holland, Pritch- 
ard, Mayo, and Carpenter, as I have already said, is, that 
Life is a mere quality-the result of organization. Vitality 
is declared to be " invariably found connected with some of 
the modes or forms of organization ; shewing itself when these 
are first developed ; coming to perfection as they are perfect- 
ed; modified by their various changes; decaying , as they 18 
decay ; and finally ceasing when they are destroyed." Hence 
it is inferred to be nothing more than a series of effects, of 
winch organization is the origin and cause-a deduction 
which 1 have maintained to be erroneous and untenable.- 
Indeed it seems to me far more reasonable to believe on 
the contrary that organization is the product-the result of the 
active condition of a principle of Vitality, the fons et origo 
of all the movements which constitute outward or visi- 
ble life. 
" La Vie,"says Cuvier, somewhat inconsistently,* "ne nait 
que de la Vie." Hence the germination of a seed; hence 
the miraculous creation of the bird within the egg; hence the 
pullutation of a cutting or bud or shoot of a plant-its thrusting 
forth roots and tendrils-its obvious search for support, for light, 
and for water; hence the healing of wounds; the restoration 
of lost parts, as of the claws of the Lobster and Crab, and of 
the whole head of the snail when decapitated, and the annual 
renewal of the horns of the Stag. In the Polypus, however 
mu'ilated and severed into fragments, this active, I might al- 
most say, creative principle, remodels in each part and com- 
pletes the deranged and mangled organization. These won- 
derful phenomena seem to me to exhibit in their obvious anal- 
ogy-may I not say in their ultimate simplicity 7-a common 
cause identically the same in all living creatures from the 
Mam noth down to the minutest Animalcule-from man, the 
very image of his Maker, down to the worm that builds ihe 
coialreef-the Medusa that sparkles on the midnight surface 
of the glowing ocean-the scarcely visible lichen that cov< rs 
with its velvet growth the time-worn masses of rugged ro. k. 
The principle of Vitality is in all the same-through both the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms ; but so vastly numerous and 
diversified are the manifestations of its presence and power, 
that time would fail me were I to attempt to recount the 
thousandth part. It feels in the sentient extremity of the 
- Paco tanti Viry aerve-it contracts in the muscle, and flows in the blood. It 
beams forth in the sweetest smiles of health, cheerfulness, and 
beauty ; it produces the distortions of deformity, disease, and 
despair. 
How difficult to understand or grasp the notion that the 
vitality of every living atom-whether fluid, as in the blood 
of animals, and the sap of vegetables-semi-fluid and gelati- 
nous, as ii^he Polypus and most infusories-or solid, as in 
wood, bone, and muscle, merely results from its composition, 
arrangement, and relative position in the structure of which it 
forms apart! When instantaneous death has followed the 
application of a drop of strong Prussic Acid to the eye or 
tongue-what change has taken place in this composition, 
arrangement, and relative position ?-what, when a man has 
fallen dead from a sudden blow on the pit of the stomach ? 
Two persons are drowned at the same time-at the same 
time rescued,and subjected at once to the same processes of res- 
toration. In one case your efforts are crowned with success 
-in the other they fail. Of the first you say truly that ani- 
mation was only suspended-of the latter that the subject 
was absolutely dead. Yet both were alike cold, motionless, 
insensible. What, then, constituted the infinite difference 
between them ? You can shew nothing. The most minute 
dissection discloses no lesion or destruction of any part in 
him who was insusceptible of restoration. No portion of the 
anatomical structure is perceptibly deranged. In the language 
of John Hunter, " the dead body has all the composition it 
ever had"-its organization is, to all appearance, as perfect as 
ever, but " the effect of this cause" has ceased, and life has 
left it never to return. Carpenter pronounces dogmatically 
that Hunter is wrong here, and that the minute structure or 
intricate condition of the organism must have undergone a 
change in death. He reasons in a vicious circle, however, 
and makes no effort to sustain the burden of proof which fairly 
lies upon him.' He is bound to prove that such change has 
19 20 
taken place, and the mere assumption cannot be admitted 
De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio. 
As among the most remarkable of the phenomena of the 
living condition, Sleep and Death demand from us a brief 
notice. " Half of our days," says Sir Thomas Browne, " we 
pass in the shadow of the earth, and the brother of Death 
extracteth a third part of our lives." There is no analogy in 
truth between these two states-which both Poets and Phi- 
losophers have loved to confound. The pious Mt^ie was so 
struck with the resemblance-surely but a slight one-that, 
as he tells us, he dared not trust himself to sleep without a 
solemn prayer. Shakespeare writes of " the sleep of death." 
Bichat says that sleep is a partial death, and death the sleep 
of all the organs. 
Sleep is, in fact, nothing more than a periodical arrest of 
the expenditure of vital power. The functions of organic 
lite never sleep. Circulation, Respiration, Assimilation, gc 
on perfectly, while "tired Nature's sweet restorer-balmy 
sleep," closes up the avenues of our animal or external rela- 
tions, through and out of which our lives, while weare awake, 
pour from us in a constant stream. Many vegetables sleep, 
it is said-and probably all animals. At any rate it is certain 
that none of the higher orders could exist long without this 
alternation of repose-and rest from actions that weary and 
exhaust them. Sir John Sinclair, in his researches into the 
history of longevity, found that there was but one point of 
agreement among his old people-they had all slept much and 
soundly! 
Of Death we must not understand a mere negation of life; 
it implies previous animation; it is the result of certain change* 
to which all living nature is inevitably subject, and which 
inanimate masses cannot undergo. Euthanasia commences 
with a loss of the power of motion-the genial warmth dimin- 
ishes-the circulation of the fluids becomes languid, and. 
gradually ceases, and the vital spark is finally extinguished. 
This cessation ©4 action, however---this apparent Joss power-this insensibility and awful stillness-though inva- 
riable attendants upon the King of Terrors, and manifest to- 
kens of his presence, do not philosophically or physiologically 
constitute Death ; for, as before stated, we meet with them 
all concurring in certain cases of suspended animation or 
dormant vitality, when the subject is still capable of being 
resuscitated. ' 
Hence then, regarding Excitability as the chief constituent 
or essential characteristic of Life, if indeed it be not merely 
another name for the very principle of vitality-so I would 
define Death to consist in the loss of susceptibility to the 
impression of stimuli or agents of excitement. 
Death is thus the counterpart of Life-yet a necessary ter- 
mination-an unavoidable result of its restless action w :hin 
and upon an organism composed of such frail and destructi le 
materials. In a future state of existence we trust-this cor- 
ruptible shall put on incorruption, and *• Death shall be swal- 
lowed up," and this mortal shall be clothed with immortality. 
Then the renewed principle of Vitality, deriving exhaustless 
energy directly from the Great Fountain of Life, shall continue 
in eternal activity in " that spiritual body" of which we read 
-doubtless an ineffable mode of organization, ennobled and 
purified. 
21 
Note.-I find ttrat in the reference to the Rev. William Tennent, (ou 
page i 1,) I mistook the father for the son. The story-a very interesting 
sue-will bo found in the " Panoplist," volume 2d