Life and Death

Life and Death is by A. Dastre, professor of physiology at the Sorbonne, translated by W. J. Greenstreet. The contents list gives Book II as The Doctrine of Energy and the Living World, with a summary that names, among others, General Ideas of Life and Elementary Life. The text gives as Newton’s point of view that force in general is the cause of motion, that force exists only in so far as there is motion, and that there would be no force without action.

The text says that for primitive man, as for the poet of all times, everything is alive, and every sound is due to a being with feelings similar to our own. The text says Thales believed that all bodies in nature were animate and living, and that Origen considered the stars as actual beings. The text says Heidenhain thought he observed that things took place otherwise, with the passage of the liquids disturbed by the fact that the cellular elements are alive. The text adds that the interpretation of these experiments is difficult and has given rise to controversies which still persist.