is made with a belief that a strict comparison can be made between the
body and an ordinary, artificial machine, and that living beings are
thus reduced to simple mechanisms; on the other hand it is made loosely,
without any special thought as to its significance, and certainly with
no conception that it reduces life to a mechanism. The conclusion that
the living body is a machine, involving as it does a mechanical
conception of life, is one of most extreme philosophical importance, and
no one interested in the philosophical conception of nature can fail to
have an interest in this problem of the strict accuracy of the statement
that the body is a machine. Doubtless the complete story of the living
machine can not yet be told; but the studies of the last fifty years
have brought us so far along the road toward its completion that a
review of the progress made and a glance at the yet unexplored realms
and unanswered questions will be profitable. For this purpose this work
is designed, with the hope that it may give a clear idea of the trend of
recent biological science and of the advances made toward the solution
of the problem of life.

MIDDLETOWN, CONN., U.S.A.

_October 1, 1898_.




CONTENTS.


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