Aristotelous peri psyches = Aristotle on the vital principle / translated from the original text, with notes by Charles Collier.

  • Aristotle, 384 B.C.-322 B.C.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aristotelous peri psyches = Aristotle on the vital principle / translated from the original text, with notes by Charles Collier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    definition was adopted substantively by Cuvier, who, in his introductoiy lecture to the “ Comparative Ana- tomy,” has illustrated the influences of this assumed principle, by a. description, alike graphic and beauti- ful, of what takes place when it has been withdrawn or extinguished. “If1,” he observes, “ in order to have a correct idea of life, we consider it in simple forms of being, we shall soon perceive that it consists in the faculty possessed by particular corporeal com- binations of lasting for a given time and under a determined form; of attracting, incessantly, into their composition a portion of the surrounding substances, and in giving back to the elements portions of their own substance. So long as this series of move- ments is maintained, the body, in which it is mani- fested, is a living body; and when it is irrecoverably arrested it is dead.” But although the definition of Bichat involves a great truth, and is a summary of all that has been ever said upon the subject, it is open to the criticism of M. Magendie, that, by its admitting the idea of death, it presupposes life, and thus establishes a vicious circle of reasoning. It is criticised also by M. Comte2, as a fancied antagonism between animate and inanimate matter, a chimerical struggle between 1 Regne Animal. 2 Science Biologique.