ILLUSTRATION AND NOTE.
In the Preface to the Second and Third Editions of this work (See preliminary pages of this translation) I have already noticed the republication of the preceding tale, which was first printed in Schiller’s Horen (for the year 1795, part 5, pages 90–96). It embodies the development of a physiological idea in a semi-mythical garb. In the year 1793, in the Latin Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants, appended to my Subterranean Flora, I had defined the vital force as the unknown cause which prevents the elements from following their original attractive forces. The first of my aphorisms ran thus:—
“Rerum naturam si totam consideres, magnum atque durabile, quod inter elementa intercedit, discrimen perspicies, quorum altera affinitatum legibus obtemperantia, altera, vinculis solutis, varie juncta apparent. Quod quidem discrimen in elementis ipsis eorumque indole neutiquam positum, quum ex sola distributione singulorum petendum esse videatur. Materiam segnem, brutam, inanimam eam vocamus, cujus stamina secundum leges chymicæ affinitatis mixta sunt. Animata atque organica ea potissimum corpora appellamus, quæ, licet in novas mutari formas perpetuo tendant, vi interna quadam continentur, quominus priscam sibique insitam formam relinquant.
“Vim internam, quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus. Itaque nullum certius mortis criterium putredine datur, qua primæ partes vel stamina rerum, antiquis juribus revocatis, affinitatum legibus parent. Corporum inanimorum nulla putredo esse potest.”[[RL]]
These opinions, against which the acute Vicq d’Azyr has protested in his Traité d’Anatomie, vol. i. p. 5, but which are still entertained by many eminent persons among my friends, I have placed in the mouth of Epicharmus. Reflection and prolonged study in the departments of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my earlier belief in peculiar, so-called vital forces. In the year 1797, at the conclusion of my Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser, nebst Vermuthungen über den chemischen Process des Lebens in der Thier- und Pflanzenwelt (vol. ii. pp. 430–436), I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of these peculiar vital forces as established. Since that period I have not applied the term peculiar forces to that which may possibly be produced only by the combined action of the separate already long known substances and their material forces. We may, however, deduce a more certain definition of animate and inanimate substances from the chemical relations of the elements, than can be derived from the criteria of voluntary movement, the circulation of fluid in solid parts, and the inner appropriation and fibrous arrangement of the elements. I call that substance animate “whose voluntarily separated parts change their composition after separation has taken place, the former external relations still continuing the same.” This definition is merely the expression of a fact. The equilibrium of the elements is maintained in animate matter by virtue of their being parts of one whole. One organ determines another, one gives to another the temperature, the tone as it were, in which these, and no other affinities operate. Thus in organisation all is reciprocal, means and end. The rapidity with which organic parts change their compound state, when separated from a complex of living organs, differs greatly according to the degree of their dependence, and the nature of the component materials. The blood of animals, which is variously modified in the different classes, undergoes a change earlier than the juices of plants. Fungi generally decompose more rapidly than the leaves of trees; and muscle more readily than the cutis.
Bone, the elementary structure of which has only been understood of late years, the hair of animals, the ligneous part of vegetable substances, the shells or husks of fruit, and the feathery calix (pappus) of plants, are not inorganic and devoid of life; but approximate, even in life, to the condition which they manifest after their separation from the rest of the organism. The higher the degree of vitality or irritability of an animate substance, the more striking or rapid will be the change in its compound state after separation. “The aggregate of the cells is an organism, and the organism lives as long as its parts continue actively subservient to the whole. Considered antithetically to inanimate nature, the organism appears to be self-determining.”[[RM]] The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of organism to physical and chemical laws, depends chiefly (and almost in the same manner as the prediction of meteorological processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the phenomena, and on the great number of the simultaneously acting forces, as well as the conditions of their activity.
I have faithfully adhered in the Cosmos to the same mode of representing and considering the so-called vital forces, and affinities,[[RN]] the formative impulse and the principle of organising activity. I there wrote as follows:[[RO]] “The mythical ideas long entertained of the imponderable substances, and vital forces, peculiar to each mode of organization, have complicated our views generally, and shed an uncertain light on the path we ought to pursue.
“The most various forms of intuition have thus, age after age, aided in augmenting the prodigious mass of empirical knowledge, which in our own day has been enlarged with ever-increasing rapidity. The investigating spirit of man strives, from time to time, with varying success, to break through those ancient forms and symbols invented to subject rebellious matter to rules of mechanical construction.”
Further in the same work,[[RP]] I have said, “It must, however, be remembered, that the inorganic crust of the earth contains within it the same elements that enter into the structure of animal and vegetable organs. A physical cosmography would therefore be incomplete, if it were to omit a consideration of these forces, and of the substances which enter into solid and fluid combinations in organic tissues, under conditions which, from our ignorance of their actual nature, we designate by the vague term of vital forces, and group into various systems, in accordance with more or less perfectly conceived analogies.”[[RQ]]