Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hand-book of physiology / by W. Morrant Baker and Vincent Dormer Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
867/930 (page 837)
![which Ave are equally ignorant. In the case, however, of an inorganic machine there is nothing of the sort, not even as in a crj'stal. Faults of structure must be repaired by some means entirely from without. And as our notion of a living being, say a horse, would be entirely altered if flaws in his composition were repaired by external means only ; so, in like maimer, would our idea of the nature of a steam-engine be completely changed had it the power of absorbing and using part of its fuel as matter wherewith to repair any ordinary injury it might sustain. It is this ignorance of the nature of such an act as reconstruc- tion which causes it to be said, with apparent reason, that so long as the term vital force is used, so long do we beg the question at issue—What is the nature of life 1 A little consideration, how- ever, will show that the justice of this criticism depends on the manner in which the word vital is used. If by it we intend to express an idea of something which arises in a totally different manner from other forces—something which, we know not how, depends on a special innate quality of living beings, and oavus no dependence on ordinary physical force, but is simply stimulated by it, and has no correlation Avith it—then, indeed, it Avould be just to say that the whole matter is merely shelved if Ave retain the term vital force. But if a distinct correlation be recognised betAvecn c)rdinary ])hysical force and that Avhich in A'arious shapes is manifested by living beings ; if it be granted that every act—say, for example, of a brain or muscle—is the exactly correlated expression of a certain q\iantity of force latent in the food Avith Avhich an animal is nourished ; and that the force produced either in the shape of thoiight or movement is but the transformed expression of external force, and can no more originate in a living organ without sup- plies of force from Avithout, than can that organ itself be formed <ir nourished Avithout supplies of matter ;—if these facts be recog- nised, then the term used in speaking of the powers exercised by ;i living being is not of very much consequence. We have as much right to \ise the term vital as the words galvanic and chemical. All alike are but the expressions of our ignorance concerning the nature of that power of Avliich all that we call forces are various manifestations. The difference is in the fipparatus by which the force is transformed.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21906300_0883.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
