Physiological Researches on Life and Death

by Xavier Bichat

We have seen in speaking of the passions, that the muscles of locomotion are brought into action in two manners. 1st, by the will; 2dly, by sympathy. This last mode of action occurs, when from the affection of an inward organ the brain is affected also, and occasions a motion which, in such case, is involuntary. A passion, for instance, affects the liver, the liver the brain, the brain the voluntary muscles. Here it is the liver, not the brain, which is the principle of motion: so that the muscles, though always thrown into action, immediately from the irradiations of the brain, belong nevertheless, as to their functions, sometimes to the one life, sometimes to the other.

Hence it is easy to conceive in what way the fœtus moves: with the fœtus, locomotion is not a portion of the animal life; its exercise does not suppose a pre-existent will; it is purely a sympathetic effect.

In utero the phenomena of the organic life succeed each other with an extreme rapidity; a thousand different motions are incessantly connected in the organs of circulation and nutrition. In these, every thing is energetically in action. But this activity of the organic life supposes a frequent influence exerted upon the brain by the inward organs, and consequently as many reactions on the part of the brain by sympathy upon the muscles. Besides, the brain is at such time more susceptible of such sort of influence, being much more developed than the other organs, and entirely passive on the side of the sensations.

We may now conceive what the motions or the fœtus are. They belong to the same class as many of those of the adult, which have not been as yet sufficiently distinguished. They are the same as those which are produced in the voluntary muscles by the passions; they resemble those of the man who sleeps, and who moves without dreaming, for nothing is more common than violent agitation in sleep succeeding difficult digestion. The stomach is in strong action; it acts upon the brain; the brain upon the muscles.

I might find a number of other involuntary organic motions taking place in the voluntary muscles of the adult, and consequently adducible to my present purpose; but what I have said on this subject will suffice. Let us remark only, that the organic motions, as well as the sympathetic affection of the brain, which is the seat of them, must gradually dispose this organ, and the muscles of the fœtus, the one to the perception of sensations, and the other to the motions of the animal life, which are to commence after birth. But on this head I shall refer to the memoirs of Monsieur Cabanis.

From what has been said, then, I believe we may confidently assert, that in the fœtus the animal life does not exist, and that all the actions which take place at this age, depend upon the organic life. The fœtus, indeed, has nothing of the especial character of the animal. Its very existence is that of the vegetable; and its destruction can only be said to be that of a living body, not of an animated being. Thus, in the cruel alternative of sacrificing the life of the mother, or that of the child, the choice cannot be doubtful.

The crime of destroying a fellow-creature is much more relative to his animal, than to his organic life.—We regret the being who feels, who reflects, who wills, who acts accordingly, and not the being which breathes, which is nourished, which is the seat of the circulation and the secretions. It is the former, whose violent death is accompanied with those images of horror, under which we look on homicide. In proportion then as in the series of animals, their intellectual functions diminish, is diminished also the painful sentiment which we feel at sight of their destruction.

If the blow, which terminates by an assassination the life of a man, were to destroy his organic life only, and suffer the other to subsist without alteration, such blow would be regarded with indifference, would excite neither pity for the victim, nor horror against the aggressor.

III. Development of the animal life, education of its organs.

A new mode of existence commences for the infant after birth; a variety of functions are added to its organic life; their aggregate become more complicated; their results are multiplied. As for the animal life, it only begins; and at this period a number of relations are established between the little individual and what surrounds him. It is then that every thing assumes with him a different mode of being, but at this remarkable epoch of the two lives, where the one is augmented by almost the half, and where the other commences only, they take upon them both a distinct character, and the aggrandisement of the first by no means follows the same laws as the development of the second.