THE NATURE OF LIFE.

On The Definitions Of Life Hitherto Received. Hints Towards A More

Comprehensive Theory.

The attempts to explain the nature of Life, which have fallen within my

knowledge, presuppose the arbitrary division of all that surrounds us into

things with life, and things without life—a division grounded on a mere

assumption. At the best, it can be regarded only as a hasty deduction from

the first superficial notices of the objects that surround us, sufficient,

perhaps, for the purpose of ordinary discrimination, but far too

indeterminate and diffluent to be taken unexamined by the philosophic

inquirer. The positions of science must be tried in the jeweller’s scales,

not like the mixed commodities of the market, on the weigh-bridge of

common opinion and vulgar usage. Such, however, has been the procedure in

the present instance, and the result has been answerable to the coarseness

of the process. By a comprisal of the _petitio principii_ with the

_argumentum in circulo_,—in plain English, by an easy logic, which begins

with begging the question, and then moving in a circle, comes round to the

point where it began,—each of the two divisions has been made to define

the other by a mere reassertion of their assumed contrariety. The

physiologist has luminously explained Y plus X by informing us that it is

a somewhat that is the antithesis of Y minus X; and if we ask, what then

is Y-X? the answer is, the antithesis of Y+X,—a reciprocation of great

service, that may remind us of the twin sisters in the fable of the Lamiæ,

with but one eye between them both, which each borrowed from the other as

either happened to want it; but with this additional disadvantage, that in

the present case it is after all but an eye of glass. The definitions

themselves will best illustrate our meaning. I will begin with that given

by Bichat. “Life is the sum of all the functions by which death is

resisted,” in which I have in vain endeavoured to discover any other

meaning than that life consists in being able to live. This author, with a

whimsical gravity, prefaces his definition with the remark, that the

nature of life has hitherto been sought for in _abstract_ considerations;

as if it were possible that four more inveterate abstractions could be

brought together in one sentence than are here assembled in the words,

life, death, function, and resistance. Similar instances might be cited

from Richerand and others. The word Life is translated into other more

learned words; and this _paraphrase_ of the _term_ is substituted for the

_definition_ of the _thing_, and therefore (as is always the case in every

_real_ definition as contra-distinguished from a _verbal_ definition,) for

at least a partial _solution_ of the _fact_. Such as these form the

_first_ class.—The second class takes some one particular function of Life

common to all living objects,—nutrition, for instance; or, to adopt the

phrase most in vogue at present, assimilation, for the purposes of

reproduction and growth. Now this, it is evident, can be an appropriate

definition only of the very lowest species, as of a Fungus or a Mollusca;

and just as comprehensive an idea of the mystery of Life, as a Mollusca

might give, can this definition afford. But this is not the only

objection. For, _first_, it is not pretended that we begin with seeking

for an organ evidently appropriated to nutrition, and then infer that the

substance in which such an organ is found _lives_. On the contrary, in a

number of cases among the obscurer animals and vegetables we infer the

organ from the pre-established fact of its life. _Secondly_, it identifies

the process itself with a certain range of its forms, those, namely, by

which it is manifested in animals and vegetables. For this, too, no less

than the former, presupposes the arbitrary division of all things into not

living and lifeless, on which, as I before observed, all these definitions

are grounded. But it is sorry logic to take the proof of an affirmative in

one thing as the proof of the negative in another. All animals that have

lungs breathe, but it would be a childish oversight to deduce the

converse, viz. all animals that breathe have lungs. The theory in which

the French chemists organized the discoveries of Black, Cavendish,

Priestly, Scheele, and other English and German philosophers, is still,

indeed, the reigning theory, but rather, it should seem, from the absence

of a rival sufficiently popular to fill the throne in its stead, than from

the continuance of an implicit belief in its own stability. We no longer

at least cherish that intensity of faith which, before Davy commenced his

brilliant career, had not only identified it with chemistry itself, but

had substituted its nomenclature, even in common conversation, for the far

more philosophic language which the human race had abstracted from the

laboratory of Nature. I may venture to prophecy that no future Beddoes

will make it the corival of the mathematical sciences in demonstrative

evidence. I think it a matter of doubt whether, during the period of its

supposed infallibility, physiology derived more benefit from the

extension, or injury from the misdirection, of its views. Enough of the

latter is fresh in recollection to make it but an equivocal compliment to

a physiological position, that it must stand or fall with the corpuscular

philosophy, as modified by the French theory of chemistry. Yet should it

happen (and the event is not impossible, nor the supposition altogether

absurd,) that more and more decisive facts should present themselves in

confirmation of the metamorphosis of elements, the position that life

consists in assimilation would either cease to be distinctive, or fall

back into the former class as an identical proposition, namely, that Life,

meaning by the word that sort of growth which takes place by means of a

peculiar organization, consists in that sort of growth which is peculiar

to organized life. _Thirdly_, the definition involves a still more

egregious flaw in the reasoning, namely, that of _cum hoc, ergo propter

hoc_ (or the assumption of causation from mere coexistence); and this,

too, in its very worst form. For it is not _cum hoc solo, ergo propter

hoc_, which would in many cases supply a presumptive proof by induction,

but _cum hoc, et plurimis aliis, ergo propter hoc_! Shell, of some kind or

other, is common to the whole order of testacea, but it would be absurd to

define the _vis vitæ_ of testaceous animals as existing in the shell,

though we know it to be the constant accompaniment, and have every reason

to believe the constant effect, of the specific life that acts in those

animals. Were we (_argumenti __ causá_) to imagine shell coextensive with

the organized creation, this would produce no abatement in the falsity of

the reasoning. Nor does the flaw stop here; for a physiological, that is a

real, definition, as distinguished from the verbal definitions of

lexicography, must consist neither in any single property or function of

the thing to be defined, nor yet in all collectively, which latter,

indeed, would be a history, not a definition. It must consist, therefore,

in the _law_ of the thing, or in such an _idea_ of it, as, being admitted,

all the properties and functions are admitted by implication. It must

likewise be so far _causal_, that a full insight having been obtained of

the law, we derive from it a progressive insight into the necessity and

_generation_ of the phenomena of which it is the law. Suppose a disease in

question, which appeared always accompanied with certain symptoms in

certain stages, and with some one or more symptoms in all stages—say

deranged digestion, capricious alternation of vivacity and languor,

headache, dilated pupil, diminished sensibility to light, &c.—Neither the

man who selected the one constant symptom, nor he who enumerated all the

symptoms, would give the scientific definition _talem scilicet, quali

scientia fit vel datur_, but the man who at once named and defined the

disease hydrocephalus, producing pressure on the brain. For it is the

essence of a scientific definition to be causative, not by introduction of

imaginary somewhats, natural or supernatural under the name of causes, but

by announcing the law of action in the particular case, in subordination

to the common law of which all the phenomena are modifications or results.

Now in the definition on which, as the representative of a whole class, we

are _now_ animadverting, a single effect is given as constituting the

cause. For nutrition by digestion is certainly necessary to life, only

under certain circumstances, but that life is previously necessary to

digestion is absolutely certain under all circumstances. Besides, what

other phenomenon of Life would the conception of assimilation, _per se_,

or as it exists in the lowest order of animals, involve or explain? How,

for instance, does it include sensation, locomotion, or habit? or if the

two former should be taken as distinct from life, _toto genere_, and

supervenient to it, we then ask what conception is given of _vital_

assimilation as contradistinguished from that of the nucleus of a crystal?

_Lastly_, this definition confounds the Law of Life, or the primary and

universal form of vital agency, with the conception, Animals. For the

kind, it substitutes the representative of its degrees and modifications.

But the first and most important office of science, physical or

physiological, is to contemplate the power in kind, abstracted from the

degree. The ideas of caloric, whether as substance or property, and the

conceptions of latent heat, the heat in ice, &c., that excite the wonder

or the laughter of the vulgar, though susceptible of the most important

practical applications, are the result of this abstraction; while the only

purpose to which a definition like the preceding could become subservient,

would be in supplying a nomenclature with the character of the most common

species of a genus—its _genus generalissimum_, and even this would be

useless in the present instance, inasmuch as it presupposes the knowledge

of the things characterised.

The third class, and far superior to the two former, selects some property

characteristic of all living bodies, not merely found in all _animals_

alike, but existing equally in all parts of all living things, both

animals and plants. Such, for instance, is the definition of Life, as

consisting in anti-putrescence, or the power of resisting putrefaction.

Like all the others, however, even this confines the idea of Life to those

degrees or concentrations of it, which manifest themselves in organized

beings, or rather in those the organization of which is apparent to us.

Consequently, it substitutes an abstract term, or generalization of

effects, for the idea, or superior form of causative agency. At best, it

describes the _vis vitá_ by one only of its many influences. It is

however, as we have said before, preferable to the former, because it is

not, as they are, altogether unfruitful, inasmuch as it attests, less

equivocally than any other sign, the presence or absence of that degree of

the _vis vitá_ which is the necessary condition of organic or

self-renewing power. It throws no light, however, on the law or principle

of action; it does not increase our insight into the other phenomena; it

presents to us no _inclusive_ form, out of which the other forms may be

developed, and finally, its defect as a definition may be detected by

generalizing it into a higher formula, as a power which, during its

continuance, resists or subordinates heterogeneous and adverse powers. Now

this holds equally true of chemical relatively to the mechanical powers;

and really affirms no more of Life than may be equally affirmed of every

form of being, namely, that it tends to preserve itself, and resists, to a

certain extent, whatever is incompatible with the laws that constitute its

particular state for the time being. For it is not true only of the great

divisions or classes into which we have found it expedient to distinguish,

while we generalize, the powers acting in nature, as into intellectual,

vital, chemical, mechanical; but it holds equally true of the degrees, or

species of each of these genera relatively to each other: as in the

decomposition of the alkalies by heat, or the galvanic spark. Like the

combining power of Life, the copula here resists for awhile the attempts

to dissolve it, and then yields, to reappear in new phenomena.

It is a wonderful property of the human mind, that when once a momentum

has been given to it in a fresh direction, it pursues the new path with

obstinate perseverance, in all conceivable bearings, to its utmost

extremes. And by the startling consequences which arise out of these

extremes, it is first awakened to its error, and either recalled to some

former track, or receives some fresh impulse, which it follows with the

same eagerness, and admits to the same monopoly. Thus in the 13th century

the first science which roused the intellects of men from the torpor of

barbarism, was, as in all countries ever has been, and ever must be the

case, the science of _Metaphysics_ and _Ontology_. We first seek what can

be found at home, and what wonder if truths, that appeared to reveal the

secret depths of our own souls, should take possession of the whole mind,

and all truths appear trivial which could not either be evolved out of

similar principles, by the same process, or at least brought under the

same forms of thought, by perceived or imagined analogies? And so it was.

For more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own

spirits, not only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but

likewise concerning the laws of external nature. All attempts at

philosophical explication were commenced by a mere effort of the

understanding, as the power of abstraction; or by the imagination,

transferring its own experiences to every object presented from without.

By the former, a class of phenomena were in the first place abstracted,

and fixed in some general term: of course this could designate only the

impressions made by the outward objects, and so far, therefore, having

been thus metamorphosed, they were effects of these objects; but then made

to supply the place of their own causes, under the name of occult

qualities. Thus the properties peculiar to gold, were abstracted from

those it possessed in common with other bodies, and then generalized in

the term _Aureity_: and the inquirer was instructed that the Essence of

Gold, or the cause which constituted the peculiar modification of matter

called gold, was the power of aureity. By the latter, _i.e._ by the

imagination, thought and will were superadded to the occult quality, and

every form of nature had its appropriate Spirit, to be controlled or

conciliated by an appropriate ceremonial. This was entitled its

SUBSTANTIAL FORM. Thus, physic became a sort of dull poetry, and the art

of medicine (for physiology could scarcely be said to exist) was a system

of magic, blended with traditional empiricism. Thus the forms of thought

proceeded to act in their own emptiness, with no attempt to fill or

substantiate them by the information of the senses, and all the branches

of science formed so many sections of logic and metaphysics. And so it

continued, even to the time that the Reformation sounded the second

trumpet, and the authority of the schools sank with that of the hierarchy,

under the intellectual courage and activity which this great revolution

had inspired. Power, once awakened, cannot rest in one object. All the

sciences partook of the new influences. The world of experimental

philosophy was soon mapped out for posterity by the comprehensive and

enterprising genius of Bacon, and the laws explained by which experiment

could be dignified into experience.(2) But no sooner was the impulse

given, than the same propensity was made manifest of looking at all things

in the one point of view which chanced to be of predominant attraction.

Our Gilbert, a man of genuine philosophical genius, had no sooner

multiplied the facts of magnetism, and extended our knowledge concerning

the property of magnetic bodies, but all things in heaven, and earth, and

in the waters beneath the earth, were resolved into magnetic influences.

Shortly after a new light was struck by Harriott and Descartes, with their

contemporaries, or immediate predecessors, and the restoration of ancient

geometry, aided by the modern invention of algebra, placed the science of

mechanism on the philosophic throne. How widely this domination spread,

and how long it continued, if, indeed, even now it can be said to have

abdicated its pretensions, the reader need not be reminded. The sublime

discoveries of Newton, and, together with these, his not less fruitful

than wonderful application, of the higher mathesis to the movements of the

celestial bodies, and to the laws of light, gave almost a religious

sanction to the corpuscular system and mechanical theory. It became

synonymous with philosophy itself. It was the sole portal at which truth

was permitted to enter. The human body was treated of as an hydraulic

machine, the operations of medicine were solved, and alas! even directed

by reference partly to gravitation and the laws of motion, and partly by

chemistry, which itself, however, as far as its theory was concerned, was

but a branch of mechanics working exclusively by imaginary wedges, angles,

and spheres. Should the reader chance to put his hand on the “Principles

of Philosophy,” by La Forge, an immediate disciple of Descartes, he may

see the phenomena of sleep solved in a copper-plate engraving, with all

the figures into which the globules of the blood shaped themselves, and

the results demonstrated by mathematical calculations. In short, from the

time of Kepler(3) to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only

all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and

organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured

within the magic circle of mathematical formulæ. And now a new light was

struck by the discovery of electricity, and, in every sense of the word,

both playful and serious, both for good and for evil, it may be affirmed

to have electrified the whole frame of natural philosophy. Close on its

heels followed the momentous discovery of the principal gases by Scheele

and Priestly, the composition of water by Cavendish, and the doctrine of

latent heat by Black. The scientific world was prepared for a new dynasty;

accordingly, as soon as Lavoisier had reduced the infinite variety of

chemical phenomena to the actions, reactions, and interchanges of a few

elementary substances, or at least excited the expectation that this would

speedily be effected, the hope shot up, almost instantly, into full faith,

that it had been effected. Henceforward the new path, thus brilliantly

opened, became the common road to all departments of knowledge: and, to

this moment, it has been pursued with an eagerness and almost epidemic

enthusiasm which, scarcely less than its political revolutions,

characterise the spirit of the age. Many and inauspicious have been the

invasions and inroads of this new conqueror into the rightful territories

of other sciences; and strange alterations have been made in less harmless

points than those of terminology, in homage to an art unsettled, in the

very ferment of imperfect discoveries, and either without a theory, or

with a theory maintained only by composition and compromise. Yet this very

circumstance has favoured its encroachments, by the gratifications which

its novelty affords to our curiosity, and by the keener interest and

higher excitement which an unsettled and revolutionary state is sure to

inspire. He who supposes that science possesses an immunity from such

influences knows little of human nature. How, otherwise, could men of

strong minds and sound judgments have attempted to penetrate by the clue

of chemical experiment the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic

life, without being aware that chemistry must needs be at its extreme

limits, when it has approached the threshold of a higher power? Its own

transgressions, however, and the failure of its enterprises will become

the means of defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard

against the opposite error of rejecting its aid altogether as analogy,

because we have repelled its ambitious claims to an identity with the

vital powers.

* * * * *

Previously to the submitting my own ideas on the subject of life, and the

powers into which it resolves itself, or rather in which it is manifested

to us, I have hazarded this apparent digression from the anxiety to

_preclude certain suspicions_, which the subject itself is so fitted to

awaken, and while I anticipate the charges, to plead in answer to each a

full and unequivocal—not guilty!

In the first place, therefore, I distinctly disclaim all intention of

explaining life into an occult quality; and retort the charge on those who

can satisfy themselves with defining it as the peculiar power by which

death is resisted.

Secondly. Convinced—by revelation, by the consenting authority of all

countries, and of all ages, by the imperative voice of my own conscience,

and by that wide chasm between man and the noblest animals of the brute

creation, which no perceivable or conceivable difference of organization

is sufficient to overbridge—that I have a rational and responsible soul, I

think far too reverentially of the same to degrade it into an hypothesis,

and cannot be blind to the contradiction I must incur, if I assign that

soul which I believe to constitute the peculiar nature of man as the cause

of functions and properties, which man possesses in common with the oyster

and the mushroom.(4)

Thirdly, while I disclaim the error of Stahl in deriving the phenomena of

life from the unconscious actions of the rational soul, I repel with still

greater earnestness the assertion and even the supposition that the

functions are the offspring of the structure, and “Life(5) the result of

organization,” connected with it as effect with cause. Nay, the position

seems to me little less strange, than as if a man should say, that

building with all the included handicraft, of plastering, sawing, planing,

&c. were the offspring of the house; and that the mason and carpenter were

the result of a suite of chambers, with the passages and staircases that

lead to them. To make A the offspring of B, when the very existence of B

as B presupposes the existence of A, is preposterous in the _literal_

sense of the word, and a consummate instance of the _hysteron proteron_ in

logic. But if I reject the organ as the cause of that, of which it is the

organ, though I might admit it among the _conditions_ of its actual

functions; for the same reason, I must reject _fluids_ and _ethers_ of all

kinds, magnetical, electrical, and universal, to whatever quintessential

thinness they may be treble distilled, and (as it were)

super-substantiated. With these, I abjure likewise all _chemical_

agencies, compositions, and decompositions, were it only that as

stimulants they suppose a stimulability _sui generis_, which is but

another paraphrase for life. Or if they are themselves at once both the

excitant and the excitability, I miss the connecting link between this

imaginary ether and the visible body, which then becomes no otherwise

distinguished from inanimate matter, than by its juxtaposition in mere

space, with an heterogeneous inmate, the cycle of whose actions revolves

within itself. Besides which I should think that I was confounding

metaphors and realities most absurdly, if I imagined that I had a greater

insight into the meaning and possibility of a living alcohol, than of a

living quicksilver. In short, visible _surface_ and _power_ of any kind,

much more the _power_ of life, are ideas which the very forms of the human

understanding make it impossible to identify. But whether the powers which

manifest themselves to us under certain conditions in the forms of

electricity, or chemical attraction, have any analogy to the power which

manifests itself in growth and organization, is altogether a different

question, and demands altogether a different chain of reasoning: if it be

indeed a tree of knowledge, it will be known by its fruits, and these will

depends not on the mere assertion, but on the inductions by which the

position is supported, and by the additions which it makes to our insight

into the nature of the facts it is meant to illustrate.

To _account_ for Life is one thing; to explain Life another. In the first

we are supposed to state something prior (if not in time, yet in the order

of Nature) to the thing accounted for, as the ground or cause of that

thing, or (which comprises the meaning and force of both words) as its

_sufficient cause, quae et facit, et subest_. And to this, in the question

of Life, I know no possible answer, but GOD. To account for a thing is to

see into the principle of its possibility, and from that principle to

evolve its being. Thus the mathematician demonstrates the truths of

geometry by constructing them. It is an admirable remark of Joh. Bapt. a

Vico, in a Tract published at Naples, 1710,(6) “Geometrica ideò

demonstramus, quia facimus; physica si demonstrare possimus, faceremus.

Metaphysici veri claritas eadem ac lucis, quam non nisi per opaca

cognoscimus; nam non lucem sed lucidas res videmus. Physica sunt opaca,

nempe formata et finita, in quibus Metaphysici veri lumen videmus.” The

reasoner who assigns structure or organization as the antecedent of Life,

who names the former a cause, and the _latter_ its effect, _he_ it is who

pretends to account for life. Now Euclid would, with great right, demand

of such a philosopher to _make_ Life; in the same sense, I mean, in which

Euclid makes an Icosahedron, or a figure of twenty sides, namely, in the

understanding or by an intellectual construction. An argument which, of

itself, is sufficient to prove the untenable nature of Materialism.

To explain a power, on the other hand, is (the power itself being assumed,

though not comprehended, _ut qui datur, non intelligitur_) to unfold or

spread it out: _ex implicito planum facere_. In the present instance, such

an explanation would consist in the reduction of the idea of Life to its

simplest and most comprehensive form or mode of action; that is, to some

characteristic _instinct_ or _tendency_, evident in all its

manifestations, and involved in the idea itself. This assumed as existing

in _kind_, it will be required to present an ascending series of

corresponding phenomena as involved _in_, proceeding _from_, and so far

therefore explained _by_, the supposition of its progressive intensity and

of the gradual enlargement of its sphere, the necessity of which again

must be contained in the idea of the tendency itself. In other words, the

tendency having been given in _kind_, it is required to render the

phenomena intelligible as its different degrees and modifications. Still

more perfect will the explanation be, should the necessity of this

progression and of these ascending gradations be contained in the assumed

idea of life, as thus defined by the general form and common purport of

all its various tendencies. This done, we have only to add the conditions

common to all its phenomena, and, those appropriate to each place and

rank, in the scale of ascent, and then proceed to determine the primary

and constitutive forms, _i.e._ the elementary powers in which this

tendency realizes itself under different degrees and conditions.(7)

What is Life? Were such a question proposed, we should be tempted to

answer, what is _not_ Life that really _is_? Our reason convinces us that

the quantities of things, taken abstractedly as quantity, exist only in

the relations they bear to the percipient; in plainer words, they exist

only in our minds, _ut quorum esse est percipi_. For if the definite

quantities have a ground, and therefore a reality, in the external world,

and independent of the mind that perceives them, this ground is _ipso

facto_ a quality; the very etymon of this world showing that a quality,

not taken in its own nature but in relation to another thing, is to be

defined _causa sufficiens, entia, de quibus loquimur; esse talia, qualia

sunt_. Either the quantities perceived exist only in the perception, or

they have likewise a real existence. In the former case, the quality (the

word is here used in an active sense) that determines them belongs to

Life, _per ipsam hypothesin_; and in the other case, since by the

agreement of all parties Life may exist in other forms than those of

consciousness, or even of sensibility, the _onus probandi_ falls on those

who assert of any quality that it is _not_ Life. For the analogy of all

that we know is clearly in favour of the contrary supposition, and if a

man would analyse the meaning of his own words, and carefully distinguish

his perceptions and sensations from the external cause exciting them, and

at the same time from the quantity or superficies under which that cause

is acting, he would instantly find himself, if we mistake not,

involuntarily identifying the ideas of Quality and Life. Life, it is

admitted on all hands, does not necessarily imply consciousness or

sensibility; and we, for our parts, cannot see that the irritability which

metals manifest to galvanism, can be more remote from that which may be

supposed to exist in the tribe of lichens, or in the helvellæ, pezizee,

&c., than the latter is from the phenomena of excitability in the human

body, whatever name it may be called by, or in whatever way it may modify

itself.(8) That the mere act of growth does not constitute the idea of

Life, or the absence of that act exclude it, we have a proof in every egg

before it is placed under the hen, and in every grain of corn before it is

put into the soil. All that could be deduced by fair reasoning would

amount to this only, that the life of metals, as the power which effects

and determines their comparative cohesion, ductility, &c., was yet lower

on the scale than the Life which produces the first attempts of

organization, in the almost shapeless tremella, or in such fungi as grow

in the dark recesses of the mine.

* * * * *

If it were asked, to what purpose or with what view we should generalize

the idea of Life thus broadly, I should not hesitate to reply that, were

there no other use conceivable, there would be _some_ advantage in merely

destroying an arbitrary assumption in natural philosophy, and in reminding

the physiologists that they could not hear the life of metals asserted

with a more contemptuous surprise than they themselves incur from the

vulgar, when they speak of the Life in mould or mucor. But this is not the

case. This wider view not only precludes a groundless assumption, it

likewise fills up the arbitrary chasm between physics and physiology, and

justifies us in using the former as means of insight into the latter,

which would be contrary to all sound rules of ratiocination if the powers

working in the objects of the two sciences were absolutely and essentially

diverse. For as to abstract the idea of _kind_ from that of _degrees_,

which are alone designated in the language of common use, is the first and

indispensable step in philosophy, so are we the better enabled to form a

notion of the _kind_, the lower the _degree_, and the simpler the form is

in which it appears to us. We study the complex in the simple; and only

from the intuition of the lower can we safely proceed to the intellection

of the higher degrees. The only danger lies in the leaping from low to

high, with the neglect of the intervening gradations. But the same error

would introduce discord into the gamut, _et ab abusu contra usum non valet

consequentia_. That these degrees will themselves bring forth secondary

kinds sufficiently distinct for all the purposes of science, and even for

common sense, will be seen in the course of this inquisition: for this is

one proof of the essential vitality of nature, that she does not ascend as

links in a suspended chain, but as the steps in a ladder; or rather she at

one and the same time _ascends_ as by a climax, and expands as the

concentric circles on the lake from the point to which the stone in its

fall had given the first impulse. At all events, a contemptuous rejection

of this mode of reasoning would come with an ill grace from a medical

philosopher, who cannot combine any three phenomena of health or of

disease without the assumption of powers, which he is compelled to deduce

without being able to demonstrate; nay, even of material substances as the

_vehicles_ of these powers, which he can never expect to exhibit before

the senses.

From the preceding it should appear, that the most comprehensive formula

to which life is reducible, would be that of the internal copula of

bodies, or (if we may venture to borrow a phrase from the Platonic school)

the _power_ which discloses itself from within as a principle of _unity_

in the _many_. But that there is a physiognomy in words, which, without

reference to their fitness or necessity, make unfavorable as well as

favorable impressions, and that every unusual term in an abstruse research

incurs the risk of being denominated jargon, I should at the same time

have borrowed a scholastic _term_, and defined life _absolutely_, as the

principle of unity in _multeity_, as far as the former, the unity to wit,

is produced _ab intra_; but _eminently_ (_sensu eminenti_), I define life

as _the principle of individuation_, or the power which unites a given

_all_ into a _whole_ that is presupposed by all its parts. The link that

combines the two, and acts throughout both, will, of course, be defined by

the _tendency_ to _individuation_. Thus, from its utmost _latency_, in

which life is one with the elementary powers of mechanism, that is, with

the powers of mechanism considered as qualitative and actually synthetic,

to its highest manifestation, (in which, as the _vis vitæ vivida_, or life

_as_ life, it subordinates and modifies these powers, becoming

contra-distinguished from mechanism,(9) _ab extra_, under the form of

organization,) there is an ascending series of intermediate classes, and

of analogous gradations in each class. To a reflecting mind, indeed, the

very fact that the powers peculiar to life in living animals _include_

cohesion, elasticity, &c. (or, in the words of a late publication, “that

living matter exhibits these physical properties,”(10)) would demonstrate

that, in the truth of things, they are homogeneous, and that both the

classes are but degrees and different dignities of one and the same

tendency. For the latter are not subjected to the former as a lever, or

walking-stick to the muscles; the more intense the life is, the less does

_elasticity_, for instance, appear _as_ elasticity. It sinks down into the

nearest approach to its _physical_ form by a series of degrees from the

contraction and elongation of the irritable muscle to the physical

hardness of the insensitive nail. The lower powers are _assimilated_, not

merely _employed_, and assimilation presupposes the homogeneous nature of

the thing assimilated; else it is a miracle, only not the same as that of

a _creation_, because it would imply that additional and equal miracle of

annihilation. In short, all the impossibilities which the acutest of the

reformed Divines have detected in the hypothesis of transubstantiation

would apply, _totidem verbis et syllabis_, to that of assimilation, if the

objects and the agents were really heterogeneous. Unless, therefore, a

thing can exhibit properties which do not belong to it, the very admission

that living matter exhibits physical properties, includes the further

admission, that those _physical_ or dead properties are themselves vital

in essence, really _distinct_ but in appearance only _different_; or in

absolute contrast with each other.

In all cases that which, _abstractly_ taken, is the definition of the

_kind_, will, when applied _absolutely_, or in its fullest sense, be the

definition of the highest _degree_ of that kind. If life, in general, be

defined _vis ab intra, cujus proprium est coadunare plura in rem unicam,

quantùm est res unica_; the unity will be more intense in proportion as it

constitutes each particular thing a whole of itself; and yet more, again,

in proportion to the number and interdependence of the parts, which it

unites as a whole. But a whole composed, _ab intra_, of different parts,

so far interdependent that each is reciprocally means and end, is an

individual, and the individuality is most intense where the greatest

dependence of the parts on the whole is combined with the greatest

dependence of the whole on its parts; the first (namely, the dependence of

the parts on the whole) being absolute; the second (namely, the dependence

of the whole on its parts) being proportional to the importance of the

relation which the parts have to the whole, that is, as their action

extends more or less beyond themselves. For this spirit of the whole is

most expressed in that part which derives its importance as an End from

its importance as a Mean, relatively to all the parts under the same

copula.

Finally, of individuals, the living power will be most intense in that

individual which, as a whole, has the greatest number of integral parts

presupposed in it; when, moreover, these integral parts, together with a

proportional increase of their interdependence, as _parts_, have

themselves most the character of wholes in the sphere occupied by them. A

mathematical point, line, or surface, is an _ens rationis_, for it

expresses an intellectual act; but a physical atom is _ens fictitium_,

which may be made subservient, as ciphers are in arithmetic, to the

purposes of hypothetical construction, _per regulam falsi_; but

transferred to _Nature_, it is in the strictest sense an _absurd_

quantity; for extension, and consequently divisibility, or _multeity_,(11)

(for space cannot be divided,) is the indispensable condition, under which

alone anything can _appear_ to us, or even be _thought_ of, as a _thing_.

But if it should be replied, that the elementary particles are atoms not

positively, but by such a hardness communicated to them as is relatively

invincible, I should remind the assertor that _temeraria citatio

supernaturalium est pulvinar intellectús pigri_, and that he who requires

me to believe a miracle of his own dreaming, must first work a miracle to

convince me that he had dreamt by inspiration. Add, too, the gross

inconsistency of resorting to an immaterial influence in order to complete

a system of materialism, by the exclusion of all modes of existence which

the theorist cannot in imagination, at least, _finger_ and _peep_ at! Each

of the preceding gradations, as above defined, might be represented as

they exist, and are realised in Nature. But each would require a work for

itself, co-extensive with the science of metals, and that of fossils (both

as geologically applied); of crystallization; and of vegetable and animal

physiology, in all its distinct branches. The nature of the present essay

scarcely permits the space sufficient to illustrate our meaning. The proof

of its probability (for to that only can we arrive by so partial an

application of the hypothesis), is to be found in its powers of solving

the particular class of phenomena, that form the subjects of the present

inquisition, more satisfactorily and profitably than has been done, or

even attempted before.

Exclusively, therefore, for the purposes of _illustration_, I would take

as an instance of the first step, the metals, those, namely, that are

capable of permanent reduction. For, by the established laws of

nomenclature, the others (as sodium, potassium, calcium, silicium, &c.)

would be entitled to a class of their own, under the name of _bases_. It

is long since the chemists have despaired of decomposing this class of

bodies. They still remain, one and all, as elements or simple bodies,

though, on the principles of the corpuscularian philosophy, nothing can be

more improbable than that they really are such; and no reason has or can

be assigned on the grounds of that system, why, in no one instance, the

contrary has not been proved. But this is at once explained, if we assume

them as the simplest form of unity, namely, the unity of powers and

properties. For these, it is evident, may be endlessly modified, but can

never be decomposed. If I were asked by a philosopher who had previously

extended the attribute of Life to the _Byssus speciosa_, and even to the

crustaceous matter, or outward bones of a lobster, &c., whether the ingot

of gold expressed _life_, I should answer without hesitation, as the

_ingot_ of gold assuredly not, for its form is accidental and _ab extra_.

It may be added to or detracted from without in the least affecting the

nature, state, or properties in the specific matter of which the ingot

consists. But as _gold_, as that special union of absolute and of relative

gravity, ductility, and hardness, which, wherever they are found,

constitute _gold_, I should answer no less fearlessly, in the affirmative.

But I should further add, that of the two counteracting tendencies of

nature, namely, that of _detachment_ from the universal life, which

universality is represented to us by gravitation, and that of _attachment_

or reduction into it, this and the other noble metals represented the

units in which the latter tendency, namely, that of identity with the life

of nature, subsisted in the greatest overbalance over the former. It is

the form of unity with the least degree of tendency to individuation.

Rising in the ascent, I should take, as illustrative of the second step,

the various forms of crystals as a union, not of powers only, but of

parts, and as the simplest forms of composition in the next narrowest

sphere of affinity. Here the form, or apparent _quantity_, is manifestly

the result of the _quality_, and the chemist himself not seldom admits

them as infallible characters of the substances united in the whole of a

given crystal.

In the first step, we had Life, as the mere _unity_ of powers; in the

second we have the simplest forms of _totality_ evolved. The third step is

presented to us in those vast formations, the tracing of which generically

would form the science of Geology, or its history in the strict sense of

the word, even as their description and diagnostics constitute its

preliminaries.

Their claim to this rank I cannot here even attempt to support. It will be

sufficient to explain my reason for having assigned it to them, by the

avowal, that I regard them in a twofold point of view: 1st, as the residue

and product of vegetable and animal life; 2d, as manifesting the

tendencies of the Life of Nature to vegetation or animalization. And this

process I believe—in one instance by the peat morasses of the northern,

and in the other instance by the coral banks of the southern hemisphere—to

be still connected with the present order of vegetable and animal Life,

which constitute the fourth and last step in these wide and comprehensive

divisions.

In the lowest forms of the vegetable and animal world we perceive totality

dawning into _individuation_, while in man, as the highest of the class,

the individuality is not only perfected in its corporeal sense, but begins

a new series beyond the appropriate limits of physiology. The tendency to

individuation, more or less obscure, more or less obvious, constitutes the

common character of all classes, as far as they maintain for themselves a

distinction from the universal life of the planet; while the degrees, both

of intensity and extension, to which this tendency is realized, form the

species, and their ranks in the great scale of ascent and expansion.

In the treatment of a subject so vast and complex, within the limits

prescribed for an essay like the present, where it is impossible not to

say either too much or too little (and too much because too little), an

author is entitled to make large claims on the candour of his judges. Many

things he must express inaccurately, not from ignorance or oversight, but

because the more precise expression would have involved the necessity of a

further explanation, and this another, even to the first elements of the

science. This is an inconvenience which presses on the analytic method, on

however large a scale it may be conducted, compared with the synthetic;

and it must bear with a tenfold weight in the present instance, where we

are not permitted to avail ourselves of its usual advantages as a

counterbalance to its inherent defects. I shall have done all that I dared

propose to myself, or that can be justly demanded of me by others, if I

have succeeded in conveying a sufficiently clear, though indistinct and

inadequate notion, so as of its many results to render intelligible that

one which I am to apply to my particular subject, not as a truth already

demonstrated, but as an hypothesis, which pretends to no higher merit than

that of explaining the particular class of phenomena to which it is

applied, and asks no other reward than a presumption in favour of the

general system of which it affirms itself to be a dependent though

integral part. By Life I everywhere mean the true Idea of Life, or that

most general form under which Life manifests itself to us, which includes

all its other forms. This I have stated to be the _tendency to

individuation_, and the degrees or intensities of Life to consist in the

progressive realization of this tendency. The power which is acknowledged

to exist, wherever the realization is found, must subsist wherever the

tendency is manifested. The power which comes forth and stirs abroad in

the bird, must be latent in the egg. I have shown, moreover, that this

tendency to individuate cannot be conceived without the opposite tendency

to connect, even as the centrifugal power supposes the centripetal, or as

the two opposite poles constitute each other, and are the constituent acts

of one and the same power in the magnet. We might say that the life of the

magnet subsists in their union, but that it lives (acts or manifests

itself) in their strife. Again, if the tendency be at once to individuate

and to connect, to detach, but so as either to retain or to reproduce

attachment, the individuation itself must be a tendency to the ultimate

production of the highest and most comprehensive individuality. This must

be the one great end of Nature, her ultimate object, or by whatever other

word we may designate that something which bears to a final cause the same

relation that Nature herself bears to the Supreme Intelligence.

* * * * *

According to the plan I have prescribed for this inquisition, we are now

to seek for the highest law, or most general form, under which this

tendency acts, and then to pursue the same process with this, as we have

already done with the tendency itself, namely, having stated the law in

its highest abstraction, to present it in the different forms in which it

appears and reappears in higher and higher dignities. I restate the

question. The tendency having been ascertained, what is its most general

law? I answer—_polarity_, or the essential dualism of Nature, arising out

of its productive unity, and still tending to reaffirm it, either as

equilibrium, indifference, or identity. In its _productive power_, of

which the product is the only measure, consists its incompatibility with

mathematical calculus. For the full applicability of an abstract science

ceases, the moment reality begins.(12) Life, then, we consider as the

copula, or the unity of thesis and antithesis, position and

counterposition,—Life itself being the positive of both; as, on the other

hand, the two counterpoints are the necessary conditions of the

_manifestations_ of Life. These, by the same necessity, unite in a

synthesis; which again, by the law of dualism, essential to all actual

existence, expands, or _produces_ itself, from the point into the _line_,

in order again to converge, as the initiation of the same productive

process in some intenser form of reality. Thus, in the identity of the two

counter-powers, Life _sub_sists; in their strife it _con_sists: and in

their reconciliation it at once dies and is born again into a new form,

either falling back into the life of the whole, or starting anew in the

process of individuation.

Whence shall we take our beginning? From Space, _istud litigium

philosophorum_, which leaves the mind equally dissatisfied, whether we

deny or assert its real existence. To make it wholly ideal, would be at

the same time to idealize all phenomena, and to undermine the very

conception of an external world. To make it real, would be to assert the

existence of something, with the properties of nothing. It would far

transcend the height to which a physiologist must confine his flights,

should we attempt to reconcile this apparent contradiction. It is the duty

and the privilege of the theologian to demonstrate, that _space_ is the

ideal organ by which the soul of man perceives the _omnipresence_ of the

Supreme Reality, as distinct from the works, which in him move, and live,

and have their being; while the equal mystery of _Time_ bears the same

relation to his _Eternity_, or what is fully equivalent, his Unity.

Physiologically contemplated, Nature begins, proceeds, and ends in a

contradiction; for the moment of absolute solution would be that in which

Nature would cease to be Nature, _i.e._ a scheme of ever-varying

relations; and physiology, in the ambitious attempt to solve phenomena

into absolute realities, would itself become a mere web of verbal

abstractions.

But it is in strict connexion with our subject, that we should make the

universal FORMS as well as the not less universal LAW of Life, clear and

intelligible in the example of _Time_ and _Space_, these being both the

first specification of the principle, and ever after its indispensable

symbols. First, a single act of self-inquiry will show the impossibility

of distinctly conceiving the one without some involution of the other;

either time expressed in space, in the form of the mathematical line, or

space within time, as in the circle. But to form the first conception of a

_real_ thing, we state both as one in the idea, _duration_. The formula

is: (A=B+B=A)=(A=A) or the oneness of space and time, is the predicate of

all _real_ being.

But as little can we conceive the oneness, except as the mid-point

producing itself on each side; that is, manifesting itself on two opposite

poles. Thus, from identity we derive duality, and from both together we

obtain polarity, synthesis, indifference, predominance. The line is Time +

Space, under the predominance of Time: Surface is Space + Time, under the

predominance of Space, while Line + Surface as the synthesis of units, is

the circle in the first dignity; to the sphere in the second; and to the

globe in the third. In short, neither can the antagonists appear but as

two forces of one power, nor can the power be conceived by us but as the

equatorial point of the two counteracting forces; of which the

_hypomochlion_ of the lever is as good an illustration as anything can be

that is thought of _mechanically_ only, and exclusively of life. To make

it adequate, we must substitute the idea of positive production for that

of rest, or mere neutralization. To the fancy alone it is the null-point,

or zero, but to the reason it is the _punctum saliens_, and the power

itself in its eminence. Even in these, the most abstract and universal

forms of all thought and perception—even in the ideas of time and space,

we slip under them, as it were, a _substratum_; for we cannot think of

them but as far as they are co-inherent, and therefore as reciprocally the

measures of each other. Nor, again, can we finish the process without

having the idea of _motion_ as its immediate product. Thus we say, that

time has one dimension, and imagine it to ourselves as a line. But the

line we have already proved to be the productive synthesis of time, with

space under the predominance of time. If we exclude space by an abstract

assumption, the time remains as a spaceless point, and represents the

concentered power of unity and active negation, _i.e._ retraction,

determination, and limit, _ab intra_. But if we assume the time as

excluded, the line vanishes, and we leave space dimensionless, an

indistinguishable ALL, and therefore the representative of absolute

weakness and formlessness, but, for that very reason, of infinite capacity

and formability.

We have been thus full and express on this subject, because these simple

ideas of time, space, and motion, of length, breadth, and depth, are not

only the simplest and universal, but the necessary symbols of all

philosophic construction. They will be found the primary factors and

elementary forms of every calculus and of every diagram in the algebra and

geometry of a scientific physiology. Accordingly, we shall recognise the

same forms under other names; but at each return more specific and

intense; and the whole process repeated with ascending gradations of

reality, _exempli gratiâ_: Time + space = motion; T_m_ + space = line +

breadth = depth; depth + motion = force; L_f_ + B_f_ = D_f_; LD_f_ + BD_f_

= attraction + repulsion = gravitation; and so on, even till they pass

into outward phenomena, and form the intermediate link between productive

powers and fixed products in light, heat, and electricity. If we pass to

the construction of matter, we find it as the product, or _tertium aliud_,

of antagonist powers of repulsion and attraction. Remove these powers, and

the conception of matter vanishes into space—conceive repulsion only, and

you have the same result. For infinite repulsion, uncounteracted and

alone, is tantamount to infinite, dimensionless diffusion, and this again

to infinite weakness; viz., to space. Conceive attraction alone, and as an

infinite contraction, its product amounts to the absolute point, viz., to

time. Conceive the synthesis of both, and you have matter as a fluxional

antecedent, which, in the very act of formation, passes into body by its

gravity, and yet in all bodies it still remains as their mass, which,

being exclusively calculable under the law of gravitation, gives rise, as

we before observed, to the science of statics, most improperly called

celestial mechanics.

In strict consistence with the same philosophy which, instead of

considering the powers of bodies to have been miraculously stuck into a

prepared and pre-existing matter, as pins into a pin-cushion, conceives

the powers as the productive factors, and the body or phenomenon as the

fact, product, or fixture; we revert again to potentiated length in the

power of magnetism; to surface in the power of electricity; and to the

synthesis of both, or potentiated depth, in constructive, that is,

chemical affinity. But while the two factors are as poles to each other,

each factor has likewise its own poles, and thus in the simple cross—

With M M, the magnetic line, running from top to bottom, with _f f_ its

northern pole, or pole of attraction; and _m m_ its south, or pole of

repulsion, and E E, running from left to right, one of the lines that

spring from each point of M M, with its east, or pole of contraction, and

_d_ its west, or pole of diffluence and expansion—we have presented to us

the universal quadruplicity, or four elemental forms of power; in the

endless proportions and modifications of which, the innumerable offspring

of all-bearing Nature consist. Wisely docile to the suggestions of Nature

herself, the ancients significantly expressed these forces under the names

of earth, water, air, and fire; not meaning any tangible or visible

substance so generalized, but the powers predominant, and, as it were, the

living basis of each, which no chemical decomposition can ever present to

the senses, were it only that their interpenetration and co-inherence

first constitutes them sensible, and is the condition and meaning of

a—_thing_. Already our more truly philosophical naturalists (Ritter, for

instance) have begun to generalize the four great elements of chemical

nomenclature, carbon, azote, oxygen, and hydrogen: the two former as the

positive and negative pole of the magnetic axis, or as the power of fixity

and mobility; and the two latter as the opposite poles, or plus and minus

states of cosmical electricity, as the powers of contraction and

dilatation, or of comburence and combustibility. These powers are to each

other as longitude to latitude, and the poles of each relatively as north

to south, and as east to west. For surely the reader will find no distrust

in a system only because Nature, ever consistent with herself, presents us

everywhere with harmonious and accordant symbols of her consistent

doctrines. Nothing would be more easy than, by the ordinary principles of

sound logic and common sense, to demonstrate the impossibility and expose

the absurdity of the corpuscularian or mechanic system, or than to prove

the intenable nature of any intermediate system. But we cannot force any

man into an insight or intuitive possession of the true philosophy,

because we cannot give him abstraction, intellectual intuition, or

constructive imagination; because we cannot organize for him an eye that

can see, an ear that can listen to, or a heart that can feel, the

harmonies of Nature, or recognise in her endless forms, the thousand-fold

realization of those simple and majestic laws, which yet in their

absoluteness can be discovered only in the recesses of his own spirit,—not

by that man, therefore, whose imaginative powers have been _ossified_ by

the continual reaction and assimilating influences of mere _objects_ on

his mind, and who is a prisoner to his own eye and its reflex, the passive

fancy!—not by him in whom an unbroken familiarity with the organic world,

as if it were mechanical, with the sensitive, but as if it were insensate,

has engendered the coarse and hard spirit of a sorcerer. The former is

unable, the latter unwilling, to master the absolute pre-requisites. There

is neither hope nor occasion for him “to cudgel his brains about it, he

has no feeling of the business.” If he do not see the necessity from

without, if he have not learned the possibility from within, of

interpenetration, of total intussusception, of the existence of all in

each as the condition of Nature’s unity and substantiality, and of the

latency under the predominance of some one power, wherein subsists her

life and its endless variety, as he must be, by habitual slavery to the

eye, or its reflex, the passive fancy, under the influences of the

corpuscularian philosophy, he has so paralysed his imaginative powers as

to be unable—or by that hardness and heart-hardening spirit of contempt,

which is sure to result from a perpetual commune with the lifeless, he has

so far debased his inward being—as to be unwilling to comprehend the

pre-requisite, he must be content, while standing thus at the threshold of

philosophy, to receive the results, though he cannot be admitted to the

deliberation—in other words, to act upon _rules_ which he is incapable of

understanding as LAWS, and to reap the harvest with the sharpened iron for

which others have delved for him in the mine.

It is not improbable that there may exist, and even be discovered, higher

forms and more akin to Life than those of magnetism, electricity, and

constructive (or chemical) affinity appear to be, even in their finest

known influences. It is not improbable that we may hereafter find

ourselves justified in revoking certain of the latter, and unappropriating

them to a yet unnamed triplicity; or that, being thus assisted, we may

obtain a qualitative instead of a quantitative insight into vegetable

animation, as distinct from animal, and that of the insect world from

both. But in the present state of science, the magnetic, electric, and

chemical powers are the last and highest of inorganic nature. These,

therefore, we assume as presenting themselves again to us, in their next

metamorphosis, as reproduction (_i.e._ growth and identity of the whole,

amid the change or flux of all the parts), irritability and sensibility;

reproduction corresponding to magnetism, irritability to electricity, and

sensibility to constructive chemical affinity.

* * * * *

But before we proceed further, it behoves us to answer the objections

contained in the following passage, or withdraw ourselves in time from the

bitter contempt in which it would involve us. Acting under such a

necessity, we need not apologise for the length of the quotation.

1. “If,” says Mr. Lawrence, “the properties of living matter are to be

explained in this way, why should not we adopt the same plan with physical

properties, and account for gravitation, or chemical affinity, by the

supposition of appropriate subtile fluids? Why does the irritability of a

muscle need such an explanation, if explanation it can be called, more

than the elective attraction of a salt?”

2. “To make the matter more intelligible, this vital principle is compared

to magnetism, to electricity, and to galvanism; or it is roundly stated to

be oxygen. ’Tis like a camel, or like a whale, or like what you please.”

3. “You have only to grant that the phenomena of the sciences just alluded

to depend on extremely fine and invisible fluids, superadded to the

matters in which they are exhibited, and to allow further that Life, and

magnetic, galvanic, and electric phenomena correspond perfectly; the

existence of a subtile matter of Life will then be a very probable

inference.”

4. “On this illustration you will naturally remark, that the existence of

the magnetic, electric, and galvanic fluids, which is offered as a proof

of the existence of a vital fluid, is as much a matter of doubt as that of

the vital fluid itself.”

5. “It is singular, also, that the vital principle should be like both

magnetism and electricity, when these two are not like each other.”

6. “It would have been interesting to have had this illustration

prosecuted a little further. We should have been pleased to learn whether

the human body is more like a loadstone, a voltaic pile, or an electrical

machine; whether the organs are to be regarded as Leyden jars, magnetic

needles, or batteries.”

7. “The truth is, there is no resemblance, no analogy, between Electricity

and Life; the two orders of phenomena are completely distinct; they are

incommensurable. Electricity illustrates life no more than life

illustrates electricity.”(13)

To avoid unnecessary description, I shall refer to the passages by the

numbers affixed to them, for that purpose, in the margin.

In reply to No. 1, I ask whether, in the nature of the mind, illustration

and explanation must not of necessity proceed from the lower to the

higher? or whether a boy is to be taught his addition, subtraction,

multiplication, and division, by the highest branches of algebraic

analysis? Is there any better way of systematic teaching, than that of

illustrating each new step, or having each new step illustrated to him by

its identity in kind with the step the next below it? though it be the

only mode in which this objection can be answered, yet it seems affronting

to remind the objector, of rules so simple as that the complex must even

be illustrated by the more simple, or the less scrutible by that which is

more subject to our examination.

In reply to No. 2, I first refer to the author’s eulogy on Mr. Hunter, p.

163, in which he is justly extolled for having “surveyed the whole

_system_ of organized beings, from plants to man:” of course, therefore,

_as_ a _system_; and therefore under some _one common law_. Now in the

very same sense, and no other, than that in which the writer himself by

implication compares himself as a man to the _dermestes typographicus_, or

the _fucus scorpioides_, do I compare the principle of Life to magnetism,

electricity, and constructive affinity,—or rather to that power to which

the two former are the thesis and antithesis, the latter the synthesis.

But if to compare involve the sense of its etymon, and involve the sense

of parity, I utterly deny that I do at all compare them; and, in truth, in

no conceivable sense of the word is it applicable, any more than a

geometrician can be affirmed to compare a polygon to a point, because he

generates the line out of the point. The writer attributes to a philosophy

essentially vital the barrenness of the mechanic system, with which alone

his imagination has been familiarised, and which, as hath been justly

observed by a contemporary writer, is contradistinguished from the former

principally in this respect; that demanding for every mode and act of

existence real or possible visibility, it knows only of distance and

nearness, composition (or rather compaction) and decomposition, in short,

the relations of unproductive particles to each other; so that in every

instance the result is the exact sum of the component qualities, as in

arithmetical addition. This is the philosophy of Death, and only of a dead

nature can it hold good. In Life, and in the view of a vital philosophy,

the two component counter-powers actually interpenetrate each other, and

generate a higher third, including both the former, “ita tamen ut sit alia

et major.”

As a complete answer to No. 3, I refer the reader to many passages in the

preceding and following pages, in which, on far higher and more

demonstrative grounds than the mechanic system can furnish, I have exposed

the unmeaningness and absurdity of these finer fluids, as applied even to

electricity itself; unless, indeed, they are assumed as its product. But

in addition I beg leave to remind the author, that it is incomparably more

agreeable to all experience to originate the formative process in the

_fluid_, whether fine or gross, than in corporeal _atoms_, in which we are

not only deserted by all experience, but contradicted by the primary

conception of body itself.

Equally inapplicable is No. 4: and of No. 5 I can only repeat, first, that

I do not make Life _like_ magnetism, or _like_ electricity; that the

difference between magnetism and electricity, and the powers illustrated

by them, is an essential part of my system, but that the animal Life of

man is the identity of all three. To whatever other system this objection

may apply, it is utterly irrelevant to that which I have here propounded:

though from the narrow limits prescribed to me, it has been propounded

with an inadequacy painful to my own feelings.

The ridicule in No. 6 might be easily retorted; but as it could prove

nothing, I will leave it where I found it, in a page where nothing is

proved.

A similar remark might be sufficient for the bold and blank assertion (No.

7) with which the extract concludes; but that I feel some curiosity to

discover what meaning the author attaches to the term analogy. Analogy

implies a difference in sort, and not merely in degree; and it is the

sameness of the end, with the difference of the means, which constitutes

analogy. No one would say the lungs of a man were analogous to the lungs

of a monkey, but any one might say that the gills of fish and the

spiracula of insects are analogous to lungs. Now if there be any

philosophers who have asserted that electricity as electricity is the

_same_ as Life, for that reason they cannot be _analogous_ to each other;

and as no man in his senses, philosopher or not, is capable of imagining

that the lightning which destroys a sheep, was a means to the same end

with the principle of its organization; for this reason, too, the two

powers cannot be represented as analogous. Indeed I know of no system in

which the word, as thus applied, would admit of an endurable meaning, but

that which teaches us, that a mass of marrow in the skull is analogous to

the rational soul, which Plato and Bacon, equally with the “poor Indian,”

believe themselves to have received from the Supreme Reason.

It would be blindness not to see, or affectation to pretend not to see,

the work at which these sarcasms were levelled. The author of that work is

abundantly able to defend his own opinions; yet I should be ambitious to

address _him_ at the close of the contest in the lines of the great Roman

poet:

“Et nos tela, Pater, ferrumque haud debile dextrâ

Spargimus, et nostro sequitur, de vulnere sanguis.”

In Mr. Abernethy’s Lecture on the Theory of Life, it is impossible not to

see a presentiment of a great truth. He has, if I may so express myself,

caught it in the breeze: and we seem to hear the first glad opening and

shout with which he springs forward to the pursuit. But it is equally

evident that the prey has not been followed through its doublings and

windings, or driven out from its brakes and covers into full and open

view. Many of the least tenable phrases may be fairly interpreted as

illustrations, rather than precise exponents of the author’s meaning; at

least, while they remain as a mere suggestion or annunciation of his

ideas, and till he has expanded them over a larger sphere, it would be

unjust to infer the contrary. But it is not with men, however strongly

their professional merits may entitle them to reverence, that my concern

is at present. If the opinions here supported are the same with those of

Mr. Abernethy, I rejoice in his authority. If they are different, I shall

wait with an anxious interest for an exposition of that difference.

Having reasserted that I no more confound magnetism with electricity, or

the chemical process, than the mathematician confounds length with

breadth, or either with depth; I think it sufficient to add that there are

two views of the subject, the former of which I do not believe

attributable to any philosopher, while both are alike disclaimed by me as

forming any part of my views. The first is that which is supposed to

consider electricity identical with life, as it subsists in organized

bodies. The other considers electricity as everywhere present, and

penetrating all bodies under the image of a subtile fluid or substance,

which, in Mr. Abernethy’s inquiry, I regard as little more than a mere

diagram on his slate, for the purpose of fixing the attention on the

intellectual conception, or as a possible _product_, (in which case

electricity must be a composite power,) or at worst, as words _quæ humana

incuria fudit_. This which, in inanimate Nature, is manifested now as

magnetism, now as electricity, and now as chemical agency, is supposed, on

entering an organized body, to constitute its vital _principle_, something

in the same manner as the steam becomes the _mechanic_ power of the

steam-engine, in _consequence_ of its compression by the steam-engine; or

as the breeze that murmurs indistinguishably in the forest becomes the

element, the substratum, of melody in the Æolian harp, and of consummate

harmony in the organ. Now this hypothesis is as directly opposed to my

view as supervention is to evolution, inasmuch as I hold the organized

body itself, in all its marvellous contexture, to be the PRODUCT and

representant of the power which is here supposed to have supervened to it.

So far from admitting a _transfer_, I do not admit it even in electricity

itself, or in the phenomena universally called electrical; among other

points I ground my explanation of remote sympathy on the directly contrary

supposition.

But my opinions will be best explained by a rapid exemplification in the

processes of Nature, from the first rudiments of individualized life in

the lowest classes of its two great poles, the vegetable and animal

creation, to its crown and consummation in the human body; thus

illustrating at once the unceasing _polarity of life, as the form of its

process, and its tendency to progressive individuation as the law of its

direction_.

Among the conceptions, of the mere ideal character of which the

philosopher is well aware, and which yet become necessary from the

necessity of assuming a beginning; the original fluidity of the planet is

the chief. Under some form or other it is expressed or implied in every

system of cosmogony and even of geology, from Moses to Thales, and from

Thales to Werner. This assumption originates in the same law of mind that

gave rise to the _prima materia_ of the Peripatetic school. In order to

_comprehend_ and _explain_ the _forms_ of things, we must imagine a state

_antecedent_ to form. A chaos of heterogeneous substances, such as our

Milton has described, is not only an _impossible_ state (for this may be

equally true of every other attempt), but it is _palpably_ impossible. It

presupposes, moreover, the thing it is intended to solve; and makes _that_

an _effect_ which had been called in as the explanatory _cause_. The

requisite and only serviceable fiction, therefore, is the representation

of CHAOS as one vast homogeneous drop! In this sense it may be even

justified, as an appropriate symbol of the great fundamental truth that

all things spring from, and subsist in, the endless strife between

indifference and difference. The whole history of Nature is comprised in

the specification of the transitional states from the one to the other.

The symbol only is fictitious: the thing signified is not only grounded in

truth—it is the law and actuating principle of all other truths, whether

physical or intellectual.

Now, by magnetism in its widest sense, I mean the first and simplest

_differential_ act of Nature, as the power which works in _length_, and

produces the first distinction between the indistinguishable by the

generation of a _line_. Relatively, therefore, to fluidity, that is, to

matter, the parts of which cannot be distinguished from each other by

figure, magnetism is the power of fixity; but, relatively to itself,

magnetism, like every other power in Nature, is designated by its opposite

poles, and must be represented as the magnetic axis, the northern pole of

which signifies rest, attraction, fixity, coherence, or hardness; the

element of EARTH in the nomenclature of _observation_ and the CARBONIC

principle in that of _experiment_; while the southern pole, as its

antithesis, represents mobility, repulsion, incoherence, and fusibility;

the element of air in the nomenclature of observation (that is, of Nature

as it appears to us when unquestioned by art), and azote or nitrogen in

the nomenclature of experiment (that is, of Nature in the state so

beautifully allegorized in the Homeric fable of Proteus bound down, and

forced to answer by Ulysses, after having been pursued through all his

metamorphoses into his ultimate form.(14)) That nothing real does or can

exist corresponding to either pole _exclusively_, is involved in the very

definition of a THING as the synthesis of opposing energies. That a thing

_is_, is owing to the co-inherence therein of any two powers; but that it

is _that_ particular thing arises from the proportions in which these

powers are co-present, either as predominance or as reciprocal

neutralization; but under the modification of twofold power to which

magnetism itself is, as the thesis to its antithesis.

The correspondent, in the world of the senses, to the magnetic axis,

exists in the series of metals. The metalleity, as the universal base of

the planet, is a necessary deduction from the principles of the system.

From the infusible, though evaporable, diamond to nitrogen itself, the

metallic nature of which has been long suspected by chemists, though still

under the mistaken notion of an oxyde, we trace a series of metals from

the maximum of coherence to positive fluidity, in all ordinary

temperatures, we mean. Though, in point of fact, cold itself is but a

superinduction of the one pole, or, what amounts to the same thing, the

subtraction of the other, under the modifications afore described; and

therefore are the metals indecomposible, because they are themselves the

decompositions of the metallic axis, in all its degrees of longitude and

latitude. Thus the substance of the planet from which it _is_, is

metallic; while that which is ever _becoming_, is in like manner produced

through the perpetual modification of the first by the opposite forces of

the second; that is, by the principle of contraction and difference at the

eastern extreme—the element of fire, or the oxygen of the chemists; and by

the elementary power of dilatation, or universality at its western

extreme—the ὑδωρ ἐν ὑδατι of the ancients, and the hydrogen of the

laboratory.

It has been before noticed that the progress of Nature is more truly

represented by the ladder, than by the suspended chain, and that she

expands as by concentric circles. This is, indeed, involved in the very

conception of individuation, whether it be applied to the different

species or to the individuals. In what manner the evident interspace is

reconciled with the equally evident continuity of the life of Nature, is a

problem that can be solved by those minds alone, which have intuitively

learnt that the whole _actual_ life of Nature originates in the existence,

and consists in the perpetual reconciliation, and as perpetual resurgency

of the primary contradiction, of which universal polarity is the result

and the exponent. From the first moment of the differential impulse—(the

primæval chemical epoch of the Wernerian school)—when Nature, by the

tranquil deposition of crystals, prepared, as it were, the fulcrum of her

after-efforts, from this, her first, and in part _irrevocable_,

self-contraction, we find, in each ensuing production, more and more

tendency to independent existence in the increasing multitude of strata,

and in the relics of the lowest orders, first of vegetable and then of

animal life. In the schistous formations, which we must here assume as in

great measure the residua of vegetable creations, that have sunk back into

the universal life, and in the later predominant calcareous masses, which

are the _caput mortuum_ of animalized existence, we ascend from the laws

of attraction and repulsion, as united in gravity, to magnetism,

electricity, and constructive power, till we arrive at the point

representative of a new and far higher intensity. For from this point

flow, as in opposite directions, the two streams of vegetation and

animalization, the former characterised by the predominance of magnetism

in its highest power, as reproduction, the other by electricity

intensified—as irritability, in like manner. The vegetable and animal

world are the thesis and antithesis, or the opposite poles of organic

life. We are not, therefore, to seek in either for analogies to the other,

but for counterpoints. On the same account, the nearer the common source,

the greater the likeness; the farther the remove, the greater the

opposition. At the extreme limits of inorganic Nature, we may detect a dim

and obscure prophecy of her ensuing process in the twigs and rude

semblances that occur in crystallization of some of the copper ores, and

in the well-known _arbor Dianæ_, and _arbor Veneris_. These latter Ritter

has already ably explained by considering the oblique branches and their

acute angles as the result of magnetic repulsion, from the presentation of

the same poles, &c. In the CORALS and CONCHYLIA, the whole act and purpose

of their existence seems to be that of connecting the animal with the

inorganic world by the perpetual formation of calcareous earth. For the

corals are nothing but polypi, which are characterised by still passing

away and dissolving into the earth, which they had previously excreted, as

if they were the first feeble effort of detachment. The power seems to

step forward from out the inorganic world only to fall back again upon it,

still, however, under a new form, and under the predominance of the more

active pole of magnetism. The product must have the same connexion,

therefore, with azote, which the first rudiments of vegetation have with

carbon: the one and the other exist not for their own sakes, but in order

to produce the conditions best fitted for the production of higher forms.

In the polypi, corallines, &c., individuality is in its first dawn; there

is the same shape in them all, and a multitude of animals form, as it

were, a common animal. And as the individuals run into each other, so do

the different genera. They likewise pass into each other so

indistinguishably, that the whole order forms a very network.

As the corals approach the conchylia, this interramification decreases.

The tubipora forms the transition to the serpula; for the characteristic

of all zoophytes, namely, the star shape of their openings, here

disappears, and the tubiporæ are distinguished from the rest of the corals

by this very circumstance, that the hollow calcareous pipes are placed

side by side, without interbranching. In the serpula they have already

become separate. How feeble this attempt is to individuate, is most

clearly shown in their mode of generation. Notwithstanding the report of

Professor Pallas, it still remains doubtful whether there exists any

actual copulation among the polypi. The mere existence of a polypus

suffices for its endless multiplication. They may be indefinitely

propagated by cuttings, so languid is the power of individuation, so

boundless that of reproduction. But the delicate jelly dissolves, as

lightly as it was formed, into its own product, and it is probable that

the Polynesia, as a future continent, will be the gigantic monument, not

so much of their life, as of the life of Nature in them. Here we may

observe the first instance of that general law, according to which Nature

still assimilates her extreme points. In these, her first and feeblest

attempts to animalize organization, it is latent, because undeveloped, and

merely potential; while, in the human brain, the last and most consummate

of her combined energies, it is again lost or disguised in the

subtlety(15) and multiplicity of its evolution.

In the class immediately above (Mollusca) we find the individuals

separate, a more determinate form, and in the higher species, the rudiment

of nerves, as the first scarce distinguishable impress and exponent of

sensibility; still, however, the vegetative reproduction is the

predominant form; and even the nerves “which float in the same cavity with

the other viscera,” are probably subservient to it, and extend their power

in the increased intensity of the reproductive force. Still prevails the

transitional state from the fluid to the solid; and the jelly, that

rudiment in which all animals, even the noblest, have their commencement;

constitutes the whole sphere of these rudimental animals.

In the snail and muscle, the residuum of the coral reappears, but refined

and ennobled into a part of the animal. The whole class is characterised

by the separation of the fluid from the solid. On the one side, a

gelatinous semi-fluid; on the other side, an entirely inorganic, though

often a most exquisitely mechanised, calcareous excretion.

Animalization in general is, we know, contra-distinguished from vegetables

in general by the predominance of azote in the chemical composition, and

of irritability in the organic process. But in this and the foregoing

classes, as being still near the common equator, or the punctum

indifferentiæ, the carbonic principle still asserts its claims, and the

force of reproduction struggles with that of irritability. In the

unreconciled strife of these two forces consists the character of the

_Vermes_, which appear to be the preparatory step for the next class.

Hence the difficulties which have embarrassed the naturalists, who adopt

the Linnæan classification, in their endeavours to discover determinate

characters of distinction between the vermes and the insecta.

But no sooner have we passed the borders, than endless variety of form and

the bold display of instincts announce, that Nature has succeeded. She has

created the intermediate link between the vegetable world, as the product

of the reproductive or magnetic power, and the animal as the exponent of

sensibility. Those that live and are nourished, on the bodies of other

animals, are comparatively few, with little diversity of shape, and almost

all of the same natural family. These we may pass by as exceptions. But

the insect world, taken at large, appears as an intenser life, that has

struggled itself loose and become emancipated from vegetation, _Floræ

liberti, et libertini!_ If for the sake of a moment’s relaxation we might

indulge a Darwinian flight, though at the risk of provoking a smile, (not,

I hope, a frown) from sober judgment, we might imagine the life of insects

an apotheosis of the petals, stamina, and nectaries, round which they

flutter, or of the stems and pedicles, to which they adhere. Beyond and

above this step, Nature seems to act with a sort of free agency, and to

have formed the classes from choice and bounty. Had she proceeded no

further, yet the whole vegetable, together with the whole insect creation,

would have formed within themselves an entire and independent system of

Life. All plants have insects, most commonly each genus of vegetables its

appropriate genera of insects; and so reciprocally interdependent and

necessary to each other are they, that we can almost as little think of

vegetation without insects, as of insects without vegetation. Though

probably the mere likeness of _shape_, in the _papilio_, and the

papilionaceous plants, suggested the idea of the former, as the latter in

a state of detachment, to our late poetical and theoretical brother; yet a

something, that approaches to a graver plausibility, is given to this

fancy of a flying blossom; when we reflect how many plants depend upon

insects for their fructification. Be it remembered, too, that with few and

very obscure exceptions, the irritable power and an analogon of voluntary

motion first dawn on us in the vegetable world, in the stamina, and

anthers, at the period of impregnation. Then, as if Nature had been

encouraged by the success of the first experiment, both the one and the

other appear as predominance and general character. THE INSECT WORLD IS

THE EXPONENT OF IRRITABILITY, AS THE VEGETABLE IS OF REPRODUCTION.

With the ascent in power, the intensity of individuation keeps even pace;

and from this we may explain all the characteristic distinctions between

this class and that of the vermes. The almost homogeneous jelly of the

animalcula infusoria became, by a vital oxydation, granular in the polypi.

This granulation formed itself into distinct organs in the molluscæ; while

for the snails, which are the next step, the animalized lime, that seemed

the sole final cause of the life of the polypi, assumes all the characters

of an ulterior purpose. Refined into a horn-like substance, it becomes to

the snails the substitute of an organ, and their outward skeleton. Yet how

much more manifold and definite, the organization of an insect, than that

of the preceding class, the patient researches of Swammerdam and Lyonnet

have evinced, to the delight and admiration of every reflecting mind.

In the insect, for the first time, we find the distinct commencement of a

separation between the exponents of sensibility and those of irritability;

_i.e._ between the _nervous_ and the _muscular_ system. The latter,

however, asserts its pre-eminence throughout. The prodigal provision of

organs for the purposes of respiration, and the marvellous powers which

numerous tribes of insects possess, of accommodating the most corrupted

airs, for a longer or shorter period, to the support of their

excitability, would of itself lead us to presume, that here the _vis

irritabilis_ is the reigning dynasty. There is here no confluence of

nerves into one reservoir, as evidence of the independent existence of

sensibility _as_ sensibility;—and therefore no counterpoise of a vascular

system, as a distinct exponent of the irritable pole. The whole

muscularity of these animals, is the organ of irritability; and the nerves

themselves are probably feeders of the motory power. The petty rills of

sensibility flow into the full expanse of irritability, and there lose

themselves. The nerves appertaining to the senses, on the other hand, are

indistinct, and comparatively unimportant. The multitude of immovable eyes

appear not so much conductors of light, as its ultimate recipient. We are

almost tempted to believe that they constitute, rather than subserve,

their sensorium.

These eye-facets form the sense of light, rather than organs of seeing.

Their almost paradoxical number at least, and the singularity of their

forms, render it probable that they impel the animal by some modification

of its irritability, herein likewise containing a striking analogy to the

known influence of light on plants, than as excitements of sensibility.

The sense that is nearest akin to irritability, and which alone resides in

the muscular system, is that of touch, or feeling. This, therefore, is the

first sense that emerges. Being confined to absolute contact, it occupies

the lowest rank; but for that very reason it is the ground of all the

other senses, which act, according to the ratio of their ascent, at still

increasing distances, and become more and more ideal, from the tentacles

of the polypus, to the human eye; which latter might be defined the

outward organ of the identity, or at least of the indifference, of the

real and ideal. But as the calcareous residuum of the lowest class

approaches to the nature of horn in the snail, so the cumbrous shell of

the snail has been transformed into polished and moveable plates of

defensive armour in the insect. Thus, too, the same power of progressive

individuation articulates the tentacula of the polypus and holothuria into

antennæ; thereby manifesting the full emersion and eminency of

irritability as a power which acts in, and gives its own character to,

that of reproduction. The least observant must have noticed the

lightning-like rapidity with which the insect tribes devour and eliminate

their food, as by an instinctive necessity, and in the least degree for

the purposes of the animal’s own growth or enlargement. The same

predominance of irritability, and at the same time a new start in

individuation, is shown in the reproductive power as generation. There is

now a regular projection, _ab intra ad extra_, for which neither sprouts

nor cuttings can any longer be the substitutes. We have not space for

further detail; but there is one point too strikingly illustrative and

even confirmative of the proposed system, to be omitted altogether. We

mean the curious fact, that the same characteristic tendency, _ad extra_,

which in the males and females of certain insect tribes is realized in the

functions of generation, conception, and parturiency, manifests and

expands itself in the _sexless_ individuals (which are always in this case

the great majority of the species), as instincts of art, and in the

construction of works completely detached and inorganic; while the

geometric regularity of these works, which bears an analogy to

crystallization, is demonstrably no more than the necessary result of

uniform action in a compressed multitude.

Again, as the insect world, averaging the whole, comes nearest to plants,

(whose very essence is reproduction,) in the multitude of their germs; so

does it resemble plants in the sufficiency of a single impregnation for

the evolution of myriads of detached lives. Even so, the metamorphoses of

insects, from the egg to the maggot and caterpillar, and from these,

through the nympha and aurelia into the perfect insect, are but a more

individuated and intenser form of a similar transformation of the plant

from the seed-leaflets, or cotyledons, through the stalk, the leaves, and

the calyx, into the perfect flower, the various colours of which seem made

for the reflection of light, as the antecedent grade to the burnished

scales, and scale-like eyes of the insect. Nevertheless, with all this

seeming prodigality of organic power, the whole tendency is _ad extra_,

and the life of insects, as electricity in the quadrate, acts chiefly on

the superficies of their bodies, to which we may add the negative proof

arising from the absence of sensibility. It is well known, that the two

halves of a divided insect have continued to perform, or attempt, each

their separate functions, the trunkless head feeding with its accustomed

voracity, while the headless trunk has exhibited its appropriate

excitability to the sexual influence.

The intropulsive force, that sends the ossification inward as to the

centre, is reserved for a yet higher step, and this we find embodied in

the class of _fishes_. Even here, however, the process still seems

imperfect, and (as it were) initiatory. The skeleton has left the surface,

indeed, but the bones approach to the nature of gristle. To feel the truth

of this, we need only compare the most perfect bone of a fish with the

thigh-bones of the mammalia, and the distinctness with which the latter

manifest the co-presence of the _magnetic_ power in its solid parietes, of

the _electrical_ in its branching arteries, and of the third greatest

power, viz., the _qualitative_ and interior, in its marrow. The senses of

fish are more distinct than those of insects. Thus, the intensity of its

sense of smell has been placed beyond doubt, and rises in the extent of

its sphere far beyond the irritable sense, or the feeling, in insects. I

say the _feeling_, not the touch; for the touch seems, as it were, a

supervention to the feeling, a perfection _given_ to it by the reaction of

the higher powers. As the feeling of the insect, in subtlety and virtual

distance, rises above the solitary sense of taste(16) in the mollusca, so

does the smell of the fish rise above the feeling of the insect. In the

fish, likewise, the eyes are single and moveable, while it is remarkable

that the only insect that possesses this latter privilege, is an

inhabitant of the waters. Finally, here first, unequivocally, and on a

_large_ scale, (for I pretend not to control the freedom, in which the

necessity of Nature is rooted, by the precise limits of a system,)—here

first, Nature exhibits, in the power of sensibility, the consummation of

those vital forms (the _nisus formativi_) the adequate and the sole

measure of which is to be sought for in their several organic products.

But as if a weakness of exhaustion had attended this advance in the same

moment it was made, Nature seems necessitated to fall back, and re-exert

herself on the lower ground which she had before occupied, that of the

vital magnetism, or the power of reproduction. The intensity of this

latter power in the fishes, is shown both in their voracity and in the

number of their eggs, which we are obliged to calculate by _weight_, not

by _tale_. There is an equal intensity both of the _immanent_ and the

_projective_ reproduction, in which, if we take in the comparative number

of individuals in each species, and likewise the different intervals

between the acts, the fish (it is probable) would be found to stand in a

similar relation to the insect, as the insect, in the latter point, stands

to the system of vegetation. Meantime, the fish sinks a step below the

insect, in the mode and circumstances of impregnation. To this we will

venture to add, the predominance of _length_, as the _form_ of growth in

so large a proportion of the known orders of fishes, and not less of their

rectilineal path of motion. In all other respects, the correspondence

combined with the progress in individuation, is striking in the whole

detail. Thus the eye, in addition to its moveability, has besides acquired

a saline moisture in its higher development, as accordant with the life of

its element. Add to these the glittering covering in both, the splendour

of the scales in the one answering to the brilliant plates in the

other,—the luminous reservoirs of the fire-flies,—the phosphorescence and

electricity of many fishes,—the same analogs of moral qualities, in their

rapacity, boldness, modes of seizing their prey by surprise,—their gills,

as presenting the intermediate state between the spiracula of the grade

next below, and the lungs of the step next above, both extremes of which

seem combined in the structure of birds and of their quill-feathers; but

above all, the convexity of the crystalline lens, so much greater than in

birds, quadrupeds, and man, and seeming to collect, in one powerful organ,

the hundred-fold microscopic facettes of the insect’s _light_ organs; and

it will not be easy to resist the conviction, that the same power is at

work in both, and reappears under higher auspices. The intention of Nature

is repeated; but, as was to have been expected, with two main differences.

First, that in the lower grade the reproductions themselves seem merged in

those of irritability, from the very circumstance that the latter

constitutes no pole, either to the former, or to sensibility. The force of

irritability acts, therefore, in the insect world, in full predominance;

while the emergence of sensibility in the fish calls forth the opposite

pole of reproduction, as a _distinct_ power, and causes therefore the

irritability to flow, in part, into the power of reproduction. The second

result of this ascent is the direction of the organizing power, _ad

intra_, with the consequent greater simplicity of the exterior form, and

the substitution of condensed and flexible force, with comparative unity

of implements, for that variety of tools, almost as numerous as the

several objects to which they are to be applied, which arises from, and

characterises, the superficial life of the insect creation. This grade of

ascension, however, like the former, is accompanied by an apparent

retrograde movement. For from this very accession of vital intensity we

must account for the absence in the fishes of all the formative, or rather

(if our language will permit it) _fabricative_ instincts. How could it be

otherwise? These instincts are the surplus and projection of the

organizing power in the direction _ad extra_, and could not, therefore,

have been expected in the class of animals that represent the first

intuitive effort of organization, and are themselves the product of its

first movement in the direction _ad intra_. But Nature never loses what

she has once learnt, though in the acquirement of each new power she

intermits, or performs less energetically, the act immediately preceding.

She often drops a faculty, but never fails to pick it up again. She may

seem forgetful and absent, but it is only to recollect herself with

_additional_, as well as _recruited_ vigour, in some after and higher

state; as if the sleep of powers, as well as of bodies, were the season

and condition of their growth. Accordingly, we find these instincts again,

and with them a wonderful synthesis of fish and insect, as a higher third,

in the feathered inhabitants of the air. Nay, she seems to have gone yet

further back, and having given B + C = D in the birds, so to have sported

with one solitary instance of B + D = A in that curious animal the dragon,

the anatomy of which has been recently given to the public by Tiedemann;

from whose work it appears, that this creature presents itself to us with

the wings of the insect, and with the nervous system, the brain, and the

cranium of the bird, in their several rudiments.

The synthesis of fish and insect in the birds, might be illustrated

equally in detail with the former; but it will be sufficient for our

purpose, that as in both the former cases, the insect and the fish, so

here in that of the birds, the powers are under the predominance of

irritability; the sensibility being dormant in the first, awakening in the

second, and awake, but still subordinate, in the third. Of this my limits

confine me to a single presumptive proof, viz., the superiority in

strength and courage of the female in the birds of prey. For herein,

indeed, does the difference of the sexes universally consist, wherever

both the forces are developed, that the female is characterised by quicker

irritability, and the male by deeper sensibility. How large a stride has

been now made by Nature in the progress of individuation, what

ornithologist does not know? From a multitude of instances we select the

most impressive, the power of sound, with the first rudiments of

modulation! That all languages designate the melody of birds as singing

(though according to Blumenbach man only sings, while birds do but

whistle), demonstrates that it has been felt as, what indeed it is, a

tentative and prophetic prelude of something yet to come. With this

conjoin the power and the tendency to acquire articulation, and to imitate

speech; conjoin the building instinct and the migratory, the monogamy of

several species, and the pairing of almost all; and we shall have

collected new instances of the usage (I dare not say law) according to

which Nature lets fall, in order to resume, and steps backward the

furthest, when she means to leap forwards with the greatest concentration

of energy.

For lo! in the next step of ascent the power of sensibility has assumed

her due place and rank: her minority is at an end, and the complete and

universal presence of a nervous system unites absolutely, by instanteity

of time what, with the due allowances for the transitional process, had

before been either lost in sameness, or perplexed by multiplicity, or

compacted by a finer mechanism. But with this, all the analogies with

which Nature had delighted us in the preceding step seem lost, and, with

the single exception of that more than valuable, that estimable

philanthropist, the dog, and, perhaps, of the horse and elephant, the

analogies to ourselves, which we can discover in the quadrupeds or

quadrumani, are of our vices, our follies, and our imperfections. The

facts in confirmation of both the propositions are so numerous and so

obvious, the advance of Nature, under the predominance of the third

synthetic power, both in the intensity of life and in the intenseness and

extension of individuality, is so undeniable, that we may leap forward at

once to the highest realization and reconciliation of both her tendencies,

that of the most perfect detachment with the greatest possible union, to

that last work, in which Nature did not assist as handmaid under the eye

of her sovereign Master, who made Man in his own image, by superadding

self-consciousness with self-government, and breathed into him a living

soul.

The class of _Vermes_ deposit a calcareous stuff, as if it had torn loose

from the earth a piece of the gross mass which it must still drag about

with it. In the insect class this residuum has refined itself. In the

fishes and amphibia it is driven back or inward, the organic power begins

to be intuitive, and sensibility appears. In the birds the bones have

become hollow; while, with apparent proportional recess, but, in truth, by

the excitement of the opposite pole, their exterior presents an actual

vegetation. The bones of the mammalia are filled up, and their coverings

have become more simple. Man possesses the most perfect osseous structure,

the least and most insignificant covering. The whole force of organic

power has attained an inward and centripetal direction. He has the whole

world in counterpoint to him, but he contains an entire world within

himself. Now, for the first time at the apex of the living pyramid, it is

Man and Nature, but Man himself is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature—the

Microcosm! Naked and helpless cometh man into the world. Such has been the

complaint from eldest time; but we complain of our chief privilege, our

ornament, and the connate mark of our sovereignty. _Porphyrigeniti sumus_!

In Man the centripetal and individualizing tendency of all Nature is

itself concentred and individualized—he is a revelation of Nature!

Henceforward, he is referred to himself, delivered up to his own charge;

and he who stands the most on himself, and stands the firmest, is the

truest, because the most individual, Man. In social and political life

this acme is inter-dependence; in moral life it is independence; in

intellectual life it is genius. Nor does the form of polarity, which has

accompanied the law of individuation up its whole ascent, desert it here.

As the height, so the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and

equal. As the liberty, so must be the reverence for law. As the

independence, so must be the service and the submission to the Supreme

Will! As the ideal genius and the originality, in the same proportion must

be the resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the inter-communion

with Nature. In the conciliating mid-point, or equator, does the Man live,

and only by its equal presence in both its poles can that life be

manifested!

* * * * *

If it had been possible, within the prescribed limits of this essay, to

have deduced the philosophy of Life synthetically, the evidence would have

been carried over from section to section, and the _quod erat

demonstrandum_ at the conclusion of one section would reappear as the

principle of the succeeding—the goal of the one would be the starting-post

of the other. Positions arranged in my own mind, as intermediate and

organic links of administration, must be presented to the reader in the

first instance, at least, as a mere hypothesis. Instead of demanding his

assent as a right, I must solicit a suspension of his judgment as a

courtesy; and, after all, however firmly the hypothesis may support the

phenomena piled upon it, we can deduce no more than a practical rule,

grounded on a strong presumption. The license of arithmetic, however,

furnishes instances that a rule may be usefully applied in practice, and

for the particular purpose may be sufficiently authenticated by the

result, before it has itself been duly demonstrated. It is enough, if only

it hath been rendered fully intelligible.

In a system where every position proceeds from a scientific

preconstruction, a power acting exclusively in length, would be magnetism

by virtue of our own definition of the term. In like manner, a surface

power would be electricity, as far as that system was concerned, whether

it accorded or not with the facts ordinarily so called. But it is

incumbent on us, who must treat the subject _analytically_, to show by

experiment that magnetism does in fact act longitudinally, and electricity

superficially; and that, consequently, the former is distinguished from,

and yet contained in, the latter, as a straight line is distinguished

from, yet contained in, a superficies.

First, that magnetism, in its conductors, seeks and follows length only,

and by the length is itself conducted, has been proved by Brugmans, in his

philosophical Essay on the Matter of Magnetism, where he relates that a

magnet capable of supporting a body four times heavier than itself, and

which acted as a magnetic needle at the distance of twenty inches, was so

weakened by the interposition of three cast-iron plates of considerable

thickness, as scarcely to move the magnetic needle from its place at a

distance of only three inches. A similar experiment had been made by

Descartes. I concluded, therefore, said Brugmans, that if the iron plates

were interposed between the magnet and the needle lengthways, instead of

breadthways or right across, the action of the magnet on the magnetic

needle would, in consequence of this great increase of resistance, become

still weaker, or perhaps evanescent. But not less to my surprise than my

admiration, I found that the power of the magnet was so far from being

_diminished_ by this change in the relative position of the iron-plates;

that, on the contrary, it now extended to a far greater distance than when

no iron at all was interposed. Some time after the same philosopher, out

of several iron bars, the sides of which were an inch broad each, composed

a single bar of the length of more than ten feet, and observed the

magnetism make its way through the whole mass. But, in order to try

whether the action could be propagated to any length indefinitely, after

several experiments with bars of intermediate lengths, in all of which he

had succeeded, he tried a four-cornered iron rod, more than twenty feet

long, and it was at this length that the magnetic power first began to be

diminished. So far Brugmans.

But the shortest way for any one to convince himself of this relation of

the magnetic power would be, in one and the same experiment, to interpose

the same piece of iron between the magnet and the compass needle first

_breadthways_; and in this case it will be found that the needle, which

had been previously deflected by the magnet from its natural position at

one of its poles, will instantly resume the same, either wholly or very

nearly so—then to interpose the same piece of iron _lengthways_; in which

case the position of the compass needle will be scarcely or not at all

affected.

The assertion of Bernoulli and others, that the absolute force of the

artificial magnet increases in the ratio of its superficies, stands

corrected in the far more accurate experiments of Coulomb (published in

his Treatise on Magnetism), which proves that the increase takes place (in

a far greater degree) in the ratio of its length. The same naturalist even

found means to determine that the directing powers of the needle, which he

had measured by help of his _balance de tortion_, stand to the length of

the needle in such a ratio as that, provided only the length of the needle

is from forty to fifty times its diameter, the momenta of these directing

powers will increase in the very same direct proportion as the length is

increased. Nor is this all that may be deduced from the experiment last

mentioned. If only the magnet be strong enough, it will show likewise that

magnetism _seeks_ the length. The proof is contained in the remarkable

fact, that the iron interposed between the magnet and the magnetic needle

_breadthways_ constantly acquires its two opposite poles at both ends

_lengthways_. Though the preceding experiments are abundantly sufficient

to prove the position, yet the following deserves mention for the

beautiful clearness of its evidence. If the magnetic power is determined

exclusively by length, it is to be expected that it will manifest no

force, where the piece of iron is of such a shape that no one dimension

predominates. Bring a _cube_ of iron near the magnetic needle and it will

not exert the slightest degree of power beyond what belongs to it as mere

iron. By the perfect equality of the dimensions, the magnetism of the

earth appears, as it were, perplexed and doubtful. Now, then attach a

second cube of iron to the first, and the instantaneous act of the iron on

the magnetic needle will make it manifest that with the length thus given,

the magnetic influence is given at the same moment.

That electricity, on the other hand, does not act in length merely, is

clear, from the fact that every electric body is electric over its whole

surface. But that electricity acts both in length and breadth, and _only_

in length and breadth, and not in depth; in short, that the (so-called)

electrical fluid in an electrified body spreads over the whole surface of

that body without penetrating it, or tending _ad intra_, may be proved by

direct experiment. Take a cylinder of wood, and bore an indefinite number

of holes in it, each of them four lines in depth and four in diameter.

Electrify this cylinder, and present to its superficies a small square of

gold-leaf, held to it by an insulating needle of gum lac, and bring this

square to an electrometer of great sensibility. The electrometer will

instantly show an electricity in the gold-leaf, similar to that of the

cylinder which had been brought into contact with it. The square of

gold-leaf having thus been discharged of its electricity, put it carefully

into one of the holes of the cylinder, _so_, namely, that it shall touch

only the bottom of the hole, and present it again to the electrometer. It

will be then found that the electrometer will exhibit no signs of

electricity whatsoever. From this it follows, that the electricity which

had been communicated to the cylinder had confined itself to the

_surface_.

If the time and the limit prescribed would admit, we could multiply

experiments, all tending to prove the same law; but we must be content

with the barely sufficient. But that the _chemical process_ acts in

_depth_, and first, therefore, _realizes_ and integrates the fluxional

power of magnetism and electricity, is involved in the _term_ composition;

and this will become still more convincing when we have learnt to regard

_decomposition_ as a mere co-relative, _i.e._ as decomposition relatively

to the body decomposed, but composition _actually_ and in respect of the

substances, _into_ which it was decomposed. The alteration in the specific

gravity of metals in their chemical amalgams, interesting as the fact is

in all points, is _decisive_ in the present; for gravity is the sole

_inward_ of inorganic bodies—it _constitutes_ their depth.

I can now, for the first time, give to my opinions that degree of

intelligibility, which is requisite for their introduction as hypotheses;

the experiments above related, understood as in the common mode of

thinking, prove that the magnetic influence flows in length, the electric

fluid by suffusion, and that chemical agency (whatever the main agent may

be) is qualitative and _in intimis_. Now my hypothesis demands the

converse of all this. I affirm that a power, acting exclusively in length,

is (wherever it be found) _magnetism_; that a power which acts _both_ in

length and in breadth, and _only_ in length and breadth, is (wherever it

be found) _electricity_; and finally, that a power which, together with

length and breadth, includes depth likewise, is (wherever it be found)

_constructive agency_. That is but _one_ phenomenon of magnetism, to which

we have appropriated and confined the term magnetism; because of all the

natural bodies at present known, iron, and one or two of its nearest

relatives in the family of hard yet coherent metals, are the only ones, in

which all the conditions are collected, under which alone the magnetic

agency can appear in and during the act itself. When, therefore, I affirm

the power of reproduction in organized bodies to be magnetism, I must be

understood to mean that this power, as it exists in the magnet, and which

we there (to use a strong phrase) catch in the very act, is to the same

kind of power, working as reproductive, what the root is to the cube of

that root. We no more confound the force in the compass needle with that

of reproduction, than a man can be said to confound his liver with a

lichen, because he affirms that both of them grow.

The same precautions are to be repeated in the identification of

electricity with irritability; and the power of depth, for which we have

yet no appropriated term, with sensibility. How great the distance is in

all, and that the lowest degrees are adopted as the exponent terms, not

for their own sakes, but merely because they may be used with less hazard

of diverting the attention from the _kind_ by peculiar properties arising

out of the degree, is evident from the third instance, unless the theorist

can be supposed insane enough to apply sensation in good earnest to the

effervescence of an acid or an alkali, or to sympathise with the

distresses of a vat of new beer when it is working. In whatever way the

subject could be treated, it must have remained unintelligible to men who,

if they think of space at all, abstract their notion of it from the

contents of an exhausted receiver. With this, and with an ether, such men

may work wonders; as what, indeed, cannot be done with a plenum and a

vacuum, when a theorist has privileged himself to assume the one, or the

other, _ad libitum_?—in all innocence of heart, and undisturbed by the

reflection that the two things cannot both be true. That both time and

space are mere abstractions I am well aware; but I know with equal

certainty that what is _expressed_ by them as the _identity_ of both is

the highest reality, and the root of all power, the power to suffer, as

well as the power to act. However mere an _ens logicum_ space may be, the

_dimensions_ of space are real, and the works of Galileo, in more than one

elegant passage, prove with what awe and amazement they fill the mind that

worthily contemplates them. Dismissing, therefore, all facts of degrees,

as introduced merely for the purposes of illustration, I would make as

little reference as possible to the magnet, the charged phial, or the

processes of the laboratory, and designate the three powers in the process

of our animal life, each by two co-relative terms, the one expressing the

_form_, and the other the _object_ and _product_ of the power. My

hypothesis will, therefore, be thus expressed, that the constituent forces

of life in the human living body are—first, the power of length, or

REPRODUCTION; second, the power of surface (that is, length and breadth),

or IRRITABILITY; third, the power of depth, or SENSIBILITY. With this

observation I may conclude these remarks, only reminding the reader that

Life itself is neither of these separately, but the copula of all

three—that Life, _as_ Life, supposes a positive or universal principle in

Nature, with a negative principle in every particular animal, the latter,

or limitative power, constantly acting to individualize, and, as it were,

_figure_ the former. _Thus_, then, Life itself is not a _thing_—a

self-subsistent _hypostasis_—but an _act_ and _process_; which, pitiable

as the prejudice will appear to the _forts esprits_, is a great deal more

than either my reason would authorise or my conscience allow me to

assert—concerning the Soul, as the principle both of Reason and

Conscience.