The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
Otherwise presenting the contrast, we may say that due attention has been
paid to the connexions among the manifestations, while no attention has
been paid to that which is manifested. When it is said that life is "the
definite correspondence of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and
successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences,"
there arises the question--Changes of what? Within the body there go on
many changes, mechanical, chemical, thermal, no one of which is the kind of
change in question; and if we combine in thought so far as we can these
kinds of changes, in such wise that each maintains its character as
mechanical, chemical, or thermal, we cannot get out of them the idea of
Life. Still more clearly do we see this insufficiency when we take the more
abstract definition--"the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations." Relations between what things? is the question then to
be asked. A relation of which the terms are unspecified does not connote a
thought but merely the blank form of a thought. Its value is comparable to
that of a cheque on which no amount is written. If it be said that the
terms cannot be specified because so many heterogeneous kinds of them have
to be included, then there comes the reply that under cover of this
inability to make a specification of terms that shall be adequately
comprehensive, there is concealed the inability to conceive the required
terms in any way.
Thus a critical testing of the definition brings us, in another way, to the
conclusion reached above, that that which gives the substance to our idea
of Life is a certain unspecified principle of activity. The dynamic element
in life is its essential element.
§ 36c. Under what form are we to conceive this dynamic element? Is this
principle of activity inherent in organic matter, or is it something
superadded? Of these alternative suppositions let us begin with the last.
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