4

Animal life &c

of soul & body. This def seems to be very obscure but we
must not forget the difficulty often attending definitions.
I shall define life to be a power of resisting
putrefaction & chemical changes or processes, & of
perserving the system in a temp. different from
that of the atmosphere. Among many, the phenomena
of life as exhibited in motion,-heat-, sensation, &
thought have been said to constitute life.
This doctrine has had many advocates, D^r Rush
taught it & before him D^r Brown. This we consider
completely refuted by the fact that life may exist
without its phenomina. Fish when frozen for some
time are not dead yet all the phenomena of life
are absent. Vitality is as perfect in plants as in
animals and in the oyster &c as in man.
By D^rs Brown, Rush & others, life has been said to be
a forced state, but none of them are the authors of it
for D^r Cullen taught it as early as 1766 in the university
of Edinburg. Stimuli can never create life. They say