It is a recognised fact that it is only through organized beings that organization can be transmitted; for how can corrupt substances, dead and deprived of vitality, give life to any organized matter? Generation is life; putrescence is death. By a law of nature, generation may be said ultimately to destroy the generative powers; a striking illustration of mortality, since life is transmitted at the expense of our very existence, and many individuals in the catenation of organized beings perish the very moment that they have tended to perpetuate their race. Death advances with rapid strides in the very ratio of the energies of life; and the surest method to attain longevity is to be sparing in the exercise of our exhausting faculties.
Et quasi vitaï lampada tradunt.
Latent or insensible life, such as that of the seeds of plants, or the animal enveloped in its egg, may last for a number of years, so long as they are able to germinate; here vitality is not worn out by relative life. Various species of the snail, the wheel-polybe, the tile-eel, and divers animalcules, have been kept apparently dead, and in the form of dried preparations, withered and hardened, for months and even years, but have afterwards been restored to life by the agency of warmth, moisture, and other stimulants. Snails have been thus reanimated after a lapse of fifteen years; and Bauer revived the Vibrio tritici, after an apparent death of five years and eight months, by merely soaking it in water. Adders have been found in hard winters not only completely frozen but absolutely brittle, yet have been restored to life when thawed. A shower of fragments of ice has fallen at Leicester, containing the horsehair eel, with the nuclei of a greater number. Colonel Wilks found eggs in the solid rocks of St. Helena susceptible of being hatched. The vitality in the seeds of plants is truly amazing; barley taken out of the bodies of mummies, Indian corn discovered in the tomb of a Peruvian Inca, and the bulb of an onion found in the hand of a mummy 3000 years old have been sown and have thriven luxuriantly. The most intense heat cannot destroy the vital property. The seeds of roasted apples, the kernels of baked prunes and boiled elder-berries have germinated. Sir John Herschel found that the Acacia Lophanta lived after having been steeped in boiling water for twelve hours, and Ludwig informs us that the seeds of a species of cedar only germinated after ebullition. Fresh-water shells have been found in the thermal waters of Gastein at a temperature of 117°, and Niebuhr found a conferva growing in water at 142°. Raspberry-seeds taken from the corpse of an ancient Briton, contemporaneous with the Druids, have produced fruit when recommitted to the earth.
Some have endeavoured to explain the resurrection of the dead by these natural phenomena; forgetting that in these instances no corruption or actual disorganization had taken place. Stahl expresses himself in the following words when defining life: “Life is formally nothing more than the preservation of the body in mixture, corruptible indeed, but without the occurrence of corruption;” and in Junker we find, “What we call life is opposite to putridity.”
The next theory attributed the principle of life to a subtle gas or aura. This doctrine constituted one of the principles of the Epicurean philosophy, and was illustrated by Lucretius in his poem on the Nature of Things:
Nam penitùs prorsùm latet hæc natura, subestque;
Nec magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostro;
Atque anima est animæ proporrò totius ipsa.
According to these notions, there existed a volatile principle that bore no specific name, but was diffused through every part of living bodies, more subtile than heat, air, or vapour. In later times this same gaseous agent received various appellations. Van Helmont designated it as the aura vitalis, while other philosophers called it the aura seminalis and the aura sanguinis. The archeus faber of Van Helmont, the astrum internum of Crollius, the principium energoumenon of Michael Alberti, the substantia energetica naturæ of Glisson, may all be referred to this unseen but powerful agency. Hippocrates called it φυσις, or nature, which he elsewhere denominates ενορωντα. It was also the δυναμις ξωτικη of Galen. This soul, or breath, or spirit, directed and preserved the whole economy; and Chrysippus asserts that it acted like salt upon pork.
Modern chemistry has sought this principle in specific agents. Caloric, or the matter of heat; oxygen, or the vital part of atmospheric air, first discovered by Priestley, and explained by Lavoisier; and finally, the fluid collected by the Voltaic trough, were then considered as the principle of life. The experiments of Professor Galvani of Bologna, in which he produced the phenomena of life many hours after death, induced many physiologists to maintain that the identity that existed in galvanic electricity and the nervous influence, proved that this aura was the creative agent in our economy.
The late experiments of Mr. Crosse seemed to show that insects were produced in silicate of potash under a long-continued action of voltaic electricity. Now whether this be really the case or not, it is grievous in the present enlightened age, to see these experiments and the assertions that resulted from them, denominated the work of atheism, and the labour of another Frankenstein!—I do not suppose for one moment that Mr. Crosse pretended to have discovered the power of imparting life, but merely of having developed a vital principle in substances supposed to be inorganic. Every experimentalist who thus develops the vital principle may be said to bestow life, without being exposed to the absurd charge of impiety.—The man who brings forth chickens from the incubation of eggs, instead of eating them; the physiologist who rots a piece of meat to develop myriads of living beings in the putrid nidus, might just as well be called an atheist.
While naturalists were thus groping in nature’s dark labyrinth, endeavouring to account for the wonders of the natura naturans, that divinity of the Stoics that Lucan thus describes,