Ideas on the Affirmative Principle of Life and the Negative Principle of Death

etable This completes the word "vegetable" from the previous page. [kingdom], vitality in the animal [kingdom], and electricity in the metallic kingdom might have analogous laws, which are all limited to stimulus original: "Reiz." In the physiology of this era, a "stimulus" was any external force that provoked a reaction in a living fiber. and excitability, and of which the general cause is light and heat, which we now know in their substances and forms.

I therefore found that in the vegetable as in the animal kingdom, carbon is the excitable principle, and light-matter original: "Lichtmaterie." This reflects the 18th-century "fluid theory" where light was considered a material substance. is the stimulus.

A multitude of interesting experiments, which I intend to present in time and am still continuing, serve as proof of this. Particularly remarkable are those concerning vitality original: "Vitalität," often referred to as "Lebenskraft" or the "vital force" that distinguishes living matter from dead matter., which in time could give the medical system an entirely different direction.

The general observations are these:

Carbon is also the ground of excitability in animals and humans.

The influence of light-matter upon carbon is the vital stimulus original: "Lebensreiz.".