Human life and the body : an essay on the force of Man-life ... / by A. Rabagliati.

  • Rabagliati, A. (Andrea Carlo Francesco), 1843-
Date:
[1920?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Human life and the body : an essay on the force of Man-life ... / by A. Rabagliati. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    numerous and so vital that it is not an exaggeration to say that more serious misunderstandings as to the working of the functions of the body have arisen from men’s minds having been carried away by the analogy than perhaps from any other single cause. Every one can see, of course, that there must be many and great differences between a living machine, like the human body, and an inanimate machine, like a steam engine or a petrol-driven motor car. Even if we think (as I do) that a much better division of the phenomena of the universe is to distinguish them not as living and dead or as animate and inanimate, but as divisible into more living and less living, into more animate and less animate, still the differences are very striking. The response of the living machine to nutritional and mechancal work is very much more marked than that of the not living—not to mention intellectual, emotional and higher sorts of response. The not living machine is responsive only or mainly to gravitation, to crystallisation and to chemical and physical forces. The living machine on the other hand, uses gravita¬ tion, crystallisation, capillarity and chemical elements and forces for its own purposes, at Erst apparently unconsciously, and later, through the introduction of constantly increasing complexity of structure, more and more consciously. Besides this first marked difference between the two sorts of machines, there is this striking difference in the second place, that the maker of the mechanical machine lives away from it and has to be applied to if anything goes wrong with it, while the life-force which is the immediate pro-creator of the living machine or living organism, dwells in it. Of course, it should be remembered that modern thinkers, or some of the most eminent of them, define life as the sum of its phenomena, and others as organisation in action. To many or even most scientific minds it appears to be more than doubtful whether there is a life-force or life-forces at all. Life is undoubtedly the sum of its phenomena ; it is undoubtedly organisation in action ; but if it is no more than this and if it is not also the cause by means of which the phenomena are what they are, or if it is not also the cause by which the organisation through which life acts comes into being and into suitability for the expression of life, then in