of Y+X,--a reciprocation of great
service, that may remind us of the twin sisters in the fable of the Lamiae,
with but one eye between them both, which each borrowed from the other as
either happened to want it; but with this additional disadvantage, that in
the present case it is after all but an eye of glass. The definitions
themselves will best illustrate our meaning. I will begin with that given
by Bichat. "Life is the sum of all the functions by which death is
resisted," in which I have in vain endeavoured to discover any other
meaning than that life consists in being able to live. This author, with a
whimsical gravity, prefaces his definition with the remark, that the
nature of life has hitherto been sought for in _abstract_ considerations;
as if it were possible that four more inveterate abstractions could be
brought together in one sentence than are here assembled in the words,
life, death, function, and resistance. Similar instances might be cited
from Richerand and others. The word Life is translated into other more
learned words; and this _paraphrase_ of the _term_ is substituted for the
_definition_ of the _thing_, and therefore (as is always the case in every
_real_ definition as contra-distinguished from a _verbal_ definition,) for
at least a partial _solution_ of the _fact_. Such as these form the
_first_ class.--The second class takes some one particular function of Life
common to all living objects,--nutrition, for instance; or, to adopt the
phrase most in vogue at present, assimilation, for the purposes of
reproduction and growth. Now this, it is evident, can be an appropriate
definition only of the very lowest species, as of a Fungus or a Mollusca;
and just as comprehensive an idea of the mystery of Life, as a Mollusca
might give, can this definition afford. But this is not the only
objection. For, _first_, it is not pretended that we begin with seeking
for an organ evidently appropriated to nutrition, and then infer that the
substance in which such an organ is found _lives_. On the contrary, in a
number of cases among the obscurer animals and vegetables we infer the
organ from the pre-established fact of its life. _Secondly_, it identifies
the process itself with a certain range of its forms, those, namely, by
which it is manifested in animals and vegetables. For this, too, no less
than the former, presupposes the arbitrary division of all things into not
living and lifeless, on which, as I before obse