s to keep the parts in subjection to the
whole, making them contribute to its support and growth, and thus
maintaining the unity of the system. The stomach digests, the lungs
inhale air, the heart beats, and the blood circulates; and as the joint
effect, or as the common supporter,--it matters not which,--of these
operations, _life_ continues, and the animated being is a unit; it has
not merely virtual, but essential unity. The reciprocal action of the
respiratory, circulating, and nervous systems is absolutely necessary to
life. The animal dies, and this unity, this subservience of the parts to
the whole, immediately ceases. In the functions of the living body, it
may be that the ordinary laws of chemistry are preserved, and that the
elements of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen combine and separate according
to their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions. But after
death, at any rate, quite a different set of chemical laws come into
play, and produce a result which is the very opposite of that before
effected. There is no longer any unanimity or cooeperation; instead of
sustaining or building up the animal tissues, the affinities now in
operation tear down, destroy, and resolve them into their ultimate
elements,--each part following out its own law of destruction or
resolution, irrespectively of the others.

"There is in living organic matter a principle constantly in
action, the operations of which are in accordance with a rational
plan, so that the individual parts which it creates in the body are
adapted to the design of the whole; and this it is which
distinguishes organism. Kant says, 'The cause of the particular
mode of existence of each part of a living body resides in the
whole, while in dead masses each part contains this cause within
itself.' This explains why a mere part separated from an organized
whole generally does not continue to live; why, in fact, an
organized body appears to be one and indivisible. And since the
different parts of an organized body are heterogeneous members of
one whole, and essential to its perfect state, the trunk cannot
live after the loss of one of these parts."--_Mueller's Physiology_,
Vol. I., p. 19.

The apparent exceptions to this statement--as in the case of the
polypes, which multiply by fissiparous generation, or by spontaneous
division of their bodies into parts, each part becoming a perfect