The physical basis of mind Author:George Henry Lewes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 25. Biology, the science of Life, being thus assigned its place in the hierarchy of objective laws, we now proceed bo cons... more »ider what the term life symbolises. By a large preliminary simplification, Life may be defined as the mode of existence of an organism in relation to its medium. To render this of any value, however, a clear conception of the organism is first indispensable; and this must be preceded by an examination of the various attempts to define life in anticipation of such a clear conception. 26. Every phenomenon, or group of phenomena, may be viewed under two aspects—the statical, which considers the conditions of existence ; and the dynamical, which considers these conditions in their resultant,—in their action. The statical definition of Life will express the connexus of the properties of organised substance, all those conditions, of matter, form, and texture, and of relation to external forces, on which the organism depends. These various conditions, condensed into a single symbol, constitute Vitality or Vital Force, and are hence taken as the Cause of vital phenomena. The dynamical definition will express the connexus of Functions and Faculties of the organism, which are the statical properties of organised substance in action, under definite relations. It is obvious that the term Life must vary with the varying significates it condenses—every variation in the complexity of the organism will bring a corresponding fulness in the signification of the term. The life of a plant is less significant than the life of an animal; and the life of a mollusc less than that of a fish. But not only is the termone of varying significance, it is always an abstract term which drops out of sight particular concrete differences registeri...« less