Somewhere in all this, it was thought, there also resided a mysterious élan vital, the force that brought inanimate objects to life. No-one knew where this ethereal essence lay, but two things seemed probable: that you could enliven it with a jolt of electricity {a notion Mary Shelley exploited to full effect in her novel Frankenstein}; and that it existed in some substances but not others, which is why we ended up with two branches of chemistry4: organic {for those substances that were thought to have it} and inorganic {for those that did not}.
( Bill Bryson )
[ A Short History of Nearly ]
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