which enable the organism to adapt its actions to actions in the environment, is going too far; for though these structural arrangements present internal relations adjusted to external relations, yet the continuous adjustment of relations cannot be held to include a fixed adjustment already made. Life, which is made up of dynamical phenomena, cannot be described in terms that shall at the same time describe the apparatus manifesting it, which presents only statical phenomena. But while this antithesis serves to remind us that the distinction between the organism and its actions is as wide as that between Matter and Motion, it at the same time draws attention to the fact that, if the structural arrangements of the adult are not properly included in the definition, yet the developmental processes by which those arrangements were established, are included. For that process of evolution during which the organs of the embryo are fitted to their prospective functions, is the gradual or continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. Moreover, those structural modifications of the adult organism which, under change of climate, change of occupation, change of food, bring about some re-arrangement in the organic balance, may similarly be regarded as progressive or continuous adjustments of internal relations to external relations. So that not only does the definition, as thus expressed, comprehend all those activities, bodily and mental, which constitute our ordinary idea of Life; but it also comprehends both those processes of development by which the organism is brought into general fitness for such activities, and those after-processes of adaptation by which it is specially fitted to its special activities.
Nevertheless, so abstract a formula as this is scarcely fitted for our present purpose. Reserving it for use where specially appropriate, it will be best commonly to employ its more concrete equivalent – to consider the internal relations as "definite combinations of simultaneous and successive changes;" the external relations as "co-existences and sequences;" and the connexion between them as a "correspondence."
CHAPTER VI.
THE DEGREE OF LIFE VARIES AS THE DEGREE OF CORRESPONDENCE
§ 31. Already it has been shown respecting each other component of the foregoing definition, that the life is high in proportion as that component is conspicuous; and it is now to be remarked, that the same thing is especially true respecting this last component – the correspondence between internal and external relations. It is manifest, a priori, that since changes in the physical state of the environment, as also of those mechanical actions and those variations of available food which occur in it, are liable to stop the processes going on in the organism; and since the adaptive changes in the organism have the effects of directly or indirectly counter-balancing these changes in the environment; it follows that the life of the organism will be short or long, low or high, according to the extent to which changes in the environment are met by corresponding changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence continues; the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence; and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence is perfect. Not to dwell in general statements, however, let us contemplate this truth under its concrete aspects.
§ 32. In life of the lowest order we find that only the most prevalent co-existences and sequences in the environment, have any simultaneous and successive changes answering to them in the organism. A plant's vital processes display adjustment solely to the continuous co-existence of certain elements and forces surrounding its roots and leaves; and vary only with the variations produced in these elements and forces by the Sun – are unaffected by the countless mechanical movements and contacts occurring around; save when accidentally arrested by these. The life of a worm is made up of actions referring to little else than the tangible properties of adjacent things. All those visible and audible changes which happen near it, and are connected with other changes that may presently destroy it, pass unrecognized – produce in it no adapted changes: its only adjustment of internal relations to external relations of this order, being seen when it escapes to the surface on feeling the vibrations produced by an approaching mole. Adjusted as are the proceedings of a bird to a far greater number of co-existences and sequences in the environment, cognizable by sight, hearing, scent, and their combinations: and numerous as are the dangers it shuns and the needs it fulfils in virtue of this extensive correspondence; it exhibits no such actions as those by which a human being counterbalances variations in temperature and supply of food, consequent on the seasons. And when we see the plant eaten, the worm trodden on, the bird dead from starvation; we see alike that the death is an arrest of such correspondence as existed, that it occurred when there was some change in the environment to which the organism made no answering change, and that thus, both in shortness and simplicity, the life was incomplete in proportion as the correspondence was incomplete. Progress towards more prolonged and higher life, evidently implies ability to respond to less general co-existences and sequences. Each step upwards must consist in adding to the previously-adjusted relations of actions or structures which the organism exhibits, some further relation parallel to a further relation in the environment. And the greater correspondence thus established, must, other things equal, show itself both in greater complexity of life, and greater length of life: a truth which will be fully perceived on remembering the enormous mortality which prevails among lowly-organized creatures, and the gradual increase of longevity and diminution of fertility which we meet with on ascending to creatures of higher and higher developments.
It must be remarked, however, that while length and complexity of life are, to a great extent, associated – while a more extended correspondence in the successive changes commonly implies increased correspondence in the simultaneous changes; yet it is not uniformly so. Between the two great divisions of life – animal and vegetal – this contrast by no means holds. A tree may live a thousand years, though the simultaneous changes going on in it answer only to the few chemical affinities in the air and the earth, and though its serial changes answer only to those of day and night, of the weather and the seasons. A tortoise, which exhibits in a given time nothing like the number of internal actions adjusted to external ones that are exhibited by a dog, yet lives far longer. The tree by its massive trunk and the tortoise by its hard carapace, are saved the necessity of responding to those many surrounding mechanical actions which organisms not thus protected must respond to or die; or rather – the tree and the tortoise display in their structures, certain simple statical relations adapted to meet countless dynamical relations external to them. But notwithstanding the qualifications suggested by such cases, it needs but to compare a microscopic fungus with an oak, an animalcule with a shark, a mouse with a man, to recognize the fact that this increasing correspondence of its changes with those of the environment which characterizes progressing life, habitually shows itself at the same time in continuity and in complication.
Even were not the connexion between length of life and complexity of life thus conspicuous, it would still be true that the life is great in proportion as the correspondence is great. For if the lengthened existence of a tree be looked upon as tantamount to a considerable amount of life; then it must be admitted that its lengthened display of correspondence is tantamount to a considerable amount of correspondence. If, otherwise, it be held that notwithstanding its much shorter existence, a dog must rank above a tortoise in degree of life because of its superior activity; then it is implied that its life is higher because its simultaneous and successive changes are more complex and more rapid – because the correspondence is greater. And since we regard as the highest life that which, like our own, shows great complexity in the correspondences, great rapidity in the succession of them, and great length in the series of them; the equivalence between degree of life and degree of correspondence is unquestionable.
§ 33. In further elucidation of this general truth, and especially in explanation of the irregularities just referred to, it must be pointed out that as the life becomes higher the environment itself becomes more complex. Though, literally, the environment means all surrounding space with the co-existences and sequences contained in it: yet, practically, it often means but a small part of this. The environment of an entozoon can scarcely be said to extend beyond the body of the animal in which the entozoon lives. That of a freshwater alga is virtually limited to the ditch inhabited by the alga. And, understanding the term in this restricted sense, we shall see that the superior organisms inhabit the more complicated environments.
Thus, contrasted with the life found on land, the lower