Of course, the term “suspended animation” has been applied in earlier times to the often exaggerated stories of “trance” and deathlike sleep in human beings. But it is now with more justice applied to these instances of dried animalcules which return to life when wetted, and to similar cases of prolonged retention of vitality by seeds, since it would appear that in these dried animalcules life really is actually and totally suspended, although the mechanism is there which resumes its life when the necessary moisture is supplied. In cases of trance in man and hibernation in animals, the heart is still very slowly and feebly beating, and the breathing is still—almost imperceptibly—at work. The chemical changes are still very slowly and gently proceeding. The buried Indian wizard, and the snail, and the Sleeping Beauty are moist, and chemically active, though feebly so; life is not absolutely suspended. But in the dried animalcule (though complete chemical desiccation is not effected), the removal of the water from the body actually arrests the changes which we call life, just as a needle may arrest the balance-wheel of a watch. Supply the water, or remove the needle, and life ceases to be suspended; it goes on once more (as one of the rules of Bridge ambiguously enacts) “as though no mistake had been made.” XVIII THE UNIVERSAL STRUCTURE OF LIVING THINGS Without doubt, the greatest and most important statement which can be made about living things is that they are either separate minute particles of living matter or (more commonly) are built up by thousands of such minute particles which have in each individual animal and plant originated from a single such particle (the fertilised germ), by its division into two, and the subsequent division of these two each into two, and of the four so produced each into two—and so on, until by repeated division into two, millions of corpuscles, hanging together as one mass, are the result.