Life and Death

BOOK IV.. The Life of Matter.

THE LIFE OF MATTER.

I. UNIVERSAL LIFE (OPINIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS). CONTINUITY BETWEEN BRUTE BODIES AND LIVING BODIES. ORIGIN OF THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 239

II. ORIGIN OF LIVING MATTER IN BRUTE MATTER 249

III. ORGANIZATION AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF LIVING MATTER AND BRUTE MATTER 255

IV. EVOLUTION AND MUTABILITY OF LIVING MATTER AND BRUTE MATTER 259

V. THE COMPOSITION OF THE SPECIFIC FORM. LIVING BODIES AND CRYSTALS. CICATRIZATION 281

VI. NUTRITION IN THE LIVING BEING AND IN THE CRYSTAL 290

VII. GENERATION IN BRUTE BODIES AND LIVING BODIES. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 294

BOOK V.. Senescence and Death.

SENESCENCE AND DEATH.

I. THE DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW FROM WHICH DEATH MAY BE REGARDED 307

II. CONSTITUTION OF THE ORGANISMS. PARTIAL DEATH. COLLECTIVE DEATHS 312

III. PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CELLULAR DEATHS. NECROBIOSIS 321

IV. APPARENT PERRENNITY OF COMPLEX INDIVIDUALS 330

V. IMMORTALITY OF THE PROTOZOA AND OF SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTIATED CELLS 334

VI. LETHALITY OF THE METAZOA AND OF DIFFERENTIATED CELLS 340

VII. MAN. THE INSTINCT OF LIFE AND THE INSTINCT OF DEATH 345

INDEX 361

LIFE AND DEATH.

BOOK I.. The Frontiers of Science—General Theories of Life and Death—Their

THE FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE—GENERAL THEORIES OF LIFE AND DEATH—THEIR SUCCESSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS.

Chapter I. Early Theories.—II. Animism.—III. Vitalism.—IV. Monism.—V. Emancipation of Scientific Research from the Yoke of Philosophy.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY THEORIES.

Animism—Vitalism—The Physico-Chemical Theory—Their Survival and Transformations.

The fundamental theories of science are but the expression of its most general results. What, then, is the most general result of the development of physiology or biology—that is to say, of that department of science which has life as its object? What glimpse do we get of the fruit of all our efforts? The answer is evidently the response to that essential question—What is Life?

There are beings which we call living beings; there are bodies which have never been alive—inanimate bodies; and there are bodies which are no longer alive—dead bodies. The fact that we use these terms implies the idea of a common attribute, of a quid proprium, life, which exists in the first, has never existed in the second, and has ceased to exist in the last. Is this idea correct? Suppose for a moment that this is so, that this implicit supposition has a foundation, and that there really is something which corresponds to the word “life.” Must we then wait for the last days of physiology, and in a measure for its last word before we know what is hidden behind this word, “life”?

Yes, no doubt positive science should be precluded from dealing with questions of this kind, which are far too general. It should be limited to the study of second causes. But, as a matter of fact, scientific men in no age have entirely conformed to this provisional or definitive antagonism. As the human mind cannot rest satisfied with indefinite attempts, or with ignorance pure and simple, it has always asked, and even now asks, from the spirit of system the solution which science refuses. It appeals to philosophical speculation. Now, philosophy, in order to explain life and death, offers us hypotheses. It offers us the hypotheses of thirty, of a hundred, or two thousand years ago. It offers us animism; vitalism in its two forms, unitary vitalism or the doctrine of vital force, and dismembered vitalism or the doctrine of vital properties; and finally, materialism, a mechanical theory, unicism or monism,—to give it all its names—i.e., the physico-chemical doctrine of life. There are, therefore, at the present day, in biology, representatives of these three systems which have never agreed on the explanation of vital phenomena—namely, animists, vitalists, and monists. But it is pretty clear that there must have been some change between yesterday and to-day. Not in vain has general science and biology itself made the progress which we know has been made since the Renaissance, and especially during the course of the nineteenth century. The old theories have been compelled to take new shape, such parts as have become obsolete have been cut away, another language is spoken—in a word, the theories have become rejuvenated. The neo-animists of our day, Chauffard in 1878, von Bunge in 1889, and more recently Rindfleisch, do not hold exactly the same views as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Stahl. Contemporary neo-vitalists, physiologists like Heidenhain, chemists like Armand Gautier, or botanists like Reinke do not between 1880 and 1900 hold the same views as Paracelsus in the fifteenth century and Van Helmont in the seventeenth, as Barthez and Bordeu at the end of the eighteenth, or as Cuvier and Bichat at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Finally, the mechanicians themselves, whether they be disciples of Darwin and Haeckel, as most biologists of our own time, or disciples of Lavoisier, as most physiologists of the present day, have passed far beyond the ideas of Descartes. They would reject the coarse materialism of the celebrated philosopher. They would no longer consider the living organism as a machine, composed of nothing but wheels, springs, levers, presses, sieves, pipes, and valves; or again of matrasses, retorts, or alembics, as the iatro-mechanicians and would-be chemists of other days believed.

All that is changed, at any rate in form. If we look back only thirty or forty years we see that the old doctrines have undergone more or less profound modifications. The changes of form, which have been made necessary by the acquisitions of contemporary science, enable us to appreciate its progress. They enable us to give an account of the progress of biology, and for this reason they deserve to be examined with some attention. It is into this examination that I ask my readers to accompany me.

CHAPTER II.. Animism.

ANIMISM.

The Common Characteristic of Animism and Vitalism: the Human Statue—Primitive Animism—Stahl’s Animism—First Objection with Reference to the Relation between Soul and Body—Second Objection: the Unconscious Character of Vital Operations—Twofold Modality of the Soul—Continuity of the Soul and Life.

Children are taught that there are three kingdoms in Nature—the mineral kingdom and the two living kingdoms, animal and vegetable. This is the whole of the sensible world. Then above all that is placed the world of the soul. School-boys therefore have no doubts on the doctrines that we discuss here. They have the solution. To them there are three distinct spheres, three separate worlds—matter, life, and thought.

It is this preconceived idea that we are about to examine. Current opinion solves a priori the question of the fundamental homogeneity or lack of resemblance of these three orders of phenomena—the phenomena of inanimate nature, of living nature, and of the thinking soul. Animism, vitalism, and monism are, in reality, different ways of looking at them. They are the different answers to this question:—Are vital, psychic, and physico-chemical manifestations essentially distinct? Vitalists distinguish between life and thought, animists identify them. In the opposite camp mechanicians, materialists, or monists make the same mistake as the animists, but to that mistake they add another: they assimilate the forces at play in animals and plants to the general forces of the universe; they confuse all three—soul, life, inanimate nature.

These problems belong on many sides to metaphysical speculation. They have been discussed by philosophers; they have been solved from time immemorial in different ways, for reasons and by arguments which it is not our purpose to examine here, and which, moreover, have not changed. But on some sides they belong to science, and must be tested in the light of its progress. Cuvier and Bichat, for example, considered that the forces in action in living beings were not only different from physico-mechanical forces, but were utterly opposed to them. We now know that this antagonism does not exist.

The preceding doctrines, therefore, depend up to a certain point on experiment and observation. They are subject to the test of experiment and observation in proportion as the latter can give us information on the degree of difference or analogy presented by psychic, vital, and physico-chemical facts. Now, scientific investigations have thrown light on these points. There is no doubt that the analogies and the resemblances of these three orders of manifestations have appeared more and more numerous and striking as our knowledge has advanced. Hence it is that animism can count to-day but very few advocates in biological science. Vitalism in its different forms counts more supporters, but the great majority have adopted the physico-chemical theory.

Both animism and vitalism separate from matter a directing principle which guides it. At bottom they are mythological theories somewhat similar to the paganism of old. The fable of Prometheus or the story of Pygmalion contains all that is essential. An immaterial principle, divine, stolen by the Titan from Jupiter, or obtained from Venus by the Cypriot sculptor, descends from Olympus and animates the form, till then inert, which has been carved in the marble or modelled in the clay. In a word, there is a human statue. It receives a breath of heavenly fire, a vital force, a divine spark, a soul, and behold! it is alive. But this breath can also leave it. An accident happens, a clot in a vein, a grain of lead in the brain—the life escapes, and all that is left is a corpse. A single instant has proved sufficient to destroy its fascination. This is how all men picture to their minds the scene of death. The breath escapes; something flies away, or flows away with the blood. The happy genius of the Greeks conceived a graceful image of this, for they represented the life or the soul in the form of a butterfly (Psyche) leaving the body, an ethereal butterfly, as it were, opening its sapphire wings.

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