The keeping of seeds and also of bacteria for days and even months–at temperatures as low as 100 degrees below zero centigrade–and their subsequent resumption of life, has removed the possibility (not excluded by Romanes) of the occurrence of chemical interactions within the substance of these organisms preserved during long periods of time, and yet not ceasing to be what is ordinarily called "alive," or endowed with "life." It is time that we should definitely abandon Herbert Spencer's and Burdon Sanderson's definitions or verbal characterizations of "life." The word "life" is commonly and properly used to designate the condition of a "living thing" or a thing which is "alive." A thing which has lost life–that is, which was living, but is so no more, and cannot be "restored to life" or resuscitated–is, in correct English, said to have "died," or to be "dead." The motionless, unchanging frozen seed or bacterium, which resumes its living activities when carefully thawed, has _not_ "died." The mere fact that it can be resuscitated justifies the application to it, according to correct English usage, of the word "alive"–it is still "alive." It is not possible to alter the significance of the words "life," "living" and "alive," so as to retain the definitions of Herbert Spencer and Burdon Sanderson as correct. They are incorrect. Life is not continuous or ceaseless change. It is a property of the more active substance of plants and animals which has special structure and definite chemical constituents. The property is, no doubt, usually manifested under normal conditions of temperature, light, moisture, pressure, chemical and electrical surroundings in a continuous series of changes, both chemical and physical. But at exceptionally low temperature, and in other arresting circumstances these changes can, in a few exceptional organisms, be absolutely stopped, though the organism in which the changes cease is uninjured as a mechanism. It still possesses "the property of life"–is still "alive" although motionless and unchanging. Its life is in suspense, as is that of a clock with arrested pendulum.