failed to introduce, even on problems of far easier and more obvious
solution.

Without further preface or apology, therefore, I shall state at once my
objections to all the definitions that have hitherto been given of Life,
as meaning too much or too little, with an exception, however, in favour
of those which mean nothing at all; and even these last must, in certain
cases, receive an honour they do not merit, and be confuted, or rather
detected, on account of their too general acceptance, and the incalculable
power of words over the minds of men in proportion to the remoteness of
the subject from the cognizance of the senses.

It would be equally presumptuous and unreasonable should I, with a late
writer on this subject, "exhort the reader to be particularly on his guard
against loose and indefinite expressions;" but I perfectly agree that they
are the bane of all science, and have been remarkably injurious in the
different departments of physiology.

THE NATURE OF LIFE.

On The Definitions Of Life Hitherto Received. Hints Towards A More
Comprehensive Theory.

The attempts to explain the nature of Life, which have fallen within my
knowledge, presuppose the arbitrary division of all that surrounds us into
things with life, and things without life--a division grounded on a mere
assumption. At the best, it can be regarded only as a hasty deduction from
the first superficial notices of the objects that surround us, sufficient,
perhaps, for the purpose of ordinary discrimination, but far too
indeterminate and diffluent to be taken unexamined by the philosophic
inquirer. The positions of science must be tried in the jeweller's scales,
not like the mixed commodities of the market, on the weigh-bridge of
common opinion and vulgar usage. Such, however, has been the procedure in
the present instance, and the result has been answerable to the coarseness
of the process. By a comprisal of the _petitio principii_ with the
_argumentum in circulo_,--in plain English, by an easy logic, which begins
with begging the question, and then moving in a circle, comes round to the
point where it began,--each of the two divisions has been made to define
the other by a mere reassertion of their assumed contrariety. The
physiologist has luminously explained Y plus X by informing us that it is
a somewhat that is the antithesis of Y minus X; and if we ask, what then
is Y-X? the answer is, the antithesis