Carneri adopts the definition given by Claude Bernard, to whom life is neither a principle nor a result, but a conflict. To the chemical synthesis, from which protoplasm results, is added, through mechanical integration, morphological synthesis, to whose special form inherited characteristics are related as elements. Through the conflict within living forms, and between these and the rest of the world, motion, attaining to the character of function, appears as continuous consumption. Destruction and renewal are inseparable correlative concepts. This fact is contained in the concept of the conservation of force, work, and motion. We may distinguish between (1) latent life, such as that accumulated in the germ, (2) the merely oscillating plant-life, and (3) free animal life. With this distinction, we place ourselves upon the standpoint of the individual, for whom there is both beginning and end, and to whom renewal is subordinated to destruction; for consumption, death is the characteristic of living in distinction from non-living matter. If, therefore, we regard life as identical with death, we merely assert that we consider death identical with life, and that, in the broader sense of the word, for the universe as a whole, there is no death. That which Claude Bernard designates as Construction is the differentiation and division of labor arising in the process of integration. The cell constitutes the first integration of protoplasm. In it, motion takes place in a particular form, organizes according to this form, causes division and synthesis, and impresses features of character that, by their action and reaction with the environment, either effect their own destruction, or else maintain their existence, propagate themselves, become fixed, and undergo further evolution. In this manner species arise and vary: and the more primitive the form, the more variable it is; the more advanced, the more fixed. Hence the invariable character of the germ-cells. In bone-formation, it is clearly shown that special structure begins very early,--in the cell, namely; but it is preserved only where it is aided by the necessary action and reaction. Autonomic in itself, life submits itself to the general laws of evolution.[67] As the direction of motion is determined for whole groups of cells by the direction of the motion of the protoplasm in the single cells, so organic function is determined by the grouping of the irritable, contractile, sensible cells. From the first origin of life up to its most perfect development, everything is formed at the cost of other forms. If life is, therefore, to be conceived as a conflict, it is a conflict as wide as the universe itself, and we say, with Claude Bernard, that "life may be characterized, but not defined."