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    rupted continuity ; to those of the animal life rest is indispensable . 4 The action of the heart is unceasing : it takes not , it needs not rest . On it goes for the space of eighty or ninety years , at the rate of a hundred thousand strokes every twenty-four hours , having at every stroke a great resistance to overcome , yet it continues this action for this length of time without the intermission of a moment . —

    But of this continuity of action the organs and functions of the animal life are incapable . No voluntary muscle can maintain its action beyond a given time . No organ of sense can continue to transmit impression after impression without ceasing , and without fatigue . The brain cannot carry on its intellectual operations with vigour beyond a certain period ; the trains of ideas with which it works become after a time indistinct and confused , nor is it capable of reacting with energy until it has remained in a state of rest proportioned to the duration of its preceding activity .

    * And this rest is sleep . Sleep is the repose of the senses ; the rest of the muscles . It is their support and sustenance . What food is to the organic , sleep is to the animal life ; no more can the process of nutrition go on without aliment , than the processes of feeling , thought , and motion , without sleep .

    * But it is the animal life only that sleeps . The organic life never sleeps . Death would be the consequence of the slumber of the heart or of the lungs . When the brain betakes itself to repose , were the engine that moves the blood to cease but for the space of four minutes to supply it with its vital fluid , never again would it awake . '

    Between all the functions of the organic life there is the closest relation and the strictest dependence ; but it is not so with the animal functions , one of which may be disordered , or entirely lost without endangering the rest . Sensation may be gone , while motion continues , and the muscle may control , though it cannot feel . The two lives are born at different periods : —

    As soon as the slightest motion is distinguishable in [ the ovum , the nidus that contains the new being , there is uniformly observable in the embryo a minute , pulsating point . It is the } oung heart propelling its infant stream ; and tiiis is long before brain , nerve , or muscle can be distinguished . The apparatus of the circulation is built up , and is in vigorous action , before there is any trace of an animal organ . Arteries and veins circulate blood , capillary vessels receive the vital fluid ; out of it they form brain and muscle , no less than the various

    substances which compose the organs of the organic life . The organic is not only anterior to the animal life , but it is by the action of the organic that the animal life is produced . The organic life is born at the first moment of existence ; the animal life is not born until a period comparatively distant ; not until that epoch of existence which is termed the period of birth—the period when the new being is detached from its mother ; when it first conies into contact with external agents ; whea it carries on all the functions of its economy by its own

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    56 Dr . Sovthwood Smith on the

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 56, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/56/