"THE NATURE OF LIFE."

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 133, 7 June 1910, Page 7

"THE NATURE OF LIFE."

AUCKLAND INSTITUTE LECTURE^ At St- Andrew's Hall, Dr BrinTault, president of the Auckland Institute, delivered a lecture on "The Nature of Life." Or r ganie life he likened to a steam engine, and inorganic life to the materials which went to build it. But just what the Impulse, the special value, or the exact determination was that was responsible for conscious life, or even physical life, was beyond the scientist to say. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, but neither Harvey nor anyone else had ever explained what caused that circulation. The contracting action of the muscles of the heart was one of the most puzzling and insolvable pbysidlogic.il questions that had ever faced the scientist. After dealing with the various properties associated with the phenomenon of life by the different schools of thought, the lecturer pointed out that neither the purely niGchiiiiL?t nor the "vits-listic theories would satisfy the great equation. The one abiding (luality with which the organic ° was liiseparntely associated was the metabolic one—so soon as chemical composition ceased to change organic life ceased. Metabolism, not protoplasm, was the real distinguishing feature of life. For the properties of life were not stored up in a chemical compound. If such were the case, and the mere property of assimilation by eating was the essential, there was no reason to believe that we could not store up energy and be practically able to preserve the properties of life for an indefinite period. But such, of course, was not the case. So soon as the flux was interrupted life itself ceased. Dr. Briffault proceeded to expound the development of organic substance from the protoplasmic cell, the functions and phase of the phenomena of the fundamental vitality, and the mysterious application of impulse, which together were responsible for the phenomenon of conscious life and individual form. At the close of the lecture a very hearty vote of thanks was accorded the president for his intensely interesting and instructive address.