Organised life must have originated from non-organised elements by organisation, and thus a new sphere is created which introduces new conditions. The laws of organised life are not purely mechanical laws, nor physical laws, nor chemical laws, but they are a peculiar kind of laws; just as different as chemical laws are from purely mechanical laws (the latter not including such phenomena as are generally called chemical affinity).
#Natural laws and monism.#
Natural laws are formulas describing facts as they take place under certain conditions. Accordingly if special conditions arise we shall have a special set of laws. Monism assumes that all the laws of nature agree among themselves; there is no contradiction among them possible. Yet there may be an infinite variety of applications. The processes of organised life are not mere mechanical processes. The abstractions which we comprise under our mechanical terms do not cover certain features of vital activity and cannot explain them. Physiology is not merely applied physics; it is a province of natural processes that has conditions of its own and the physiological conditions are different from physical conditions. This however does not overthrow monism. We believe none the less in the unity of all natural laws and trust that if the constitution of the cosmos were transparent in its minutest details to our inquiring mind, we should see the same law operating in all the different provinces; we should see in all instances a difference of conditions and consequent thereupon a difference of results that can be formulated in different natural laws, among which there is none contradictory to any other.
EDITOR.
LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.
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FRENCH PUBLICATIONS.
Why do we sleep? Some have said, through cerebral congestion; others, through cerebral anæmia. In reality the question remains undecided. M. S. SERGUEYEFF has attempted to resolve it in his scholarly lectures published under the title of Le Sommeil et le Système nerveux, Physiologie de la Veille et du Sommeil.[86] He considers it under a new and very general point of view.
[86] In two thick octavo volumes. Alcan, publisher.
According to him, wake and sleep would be the two alternating phases of one and the same function, necessarily vegetative, and absolutely indispensable to life. Sleep would respond to an assimilation; wake to a dis-assimilation.