primæval order, beautiful and undisturbed, perfect in its symmetry and the mighty frame, after it had received its form, abandoned apparently to desolation; left to the mingled influence of the most formidable elements; convulsed by fire, overwhelmed by water, shattered and disjointed by one power, decomposed and again consolidated by the other; the most compact rock mouldering under the united action of air, and rain, and frost; the softest paste indurated by fire, by pressure, or by cementing fluids; and this everlasting conflict of opposing principles, terminating in such harmonious, such felicitous results, as to adapt, perfectly, the surface of the earth to the beings who have been destined for its inhabitants.

In examining these results, in comprehending and illustrating these incidents, varied and magnificent as they may appear, we require no other agents than those which uniformly appertain to matter, no other principles than those which regulate and govern the material system.

But when from the inorganic and lifeless forms of nature, from the inert and passive substances which compose the surface of this globe; from the kingdoms of silence and repose, we pass to activity, to organization, and to life, we find immediately other laws, other causes of action, other principles of association and of duration.

The power of creation is no where disclosed with so much beauty, profusion and wisdom, as in the immense domain of living beings. To inorganic substances have been given extent, impenetrability, an independent existence, and an indefinite, if not an interminable duration. To organized beings, variety and beauty of form, softness and flexibility of members, an existence dependent on almost every surrounding object, and a duration, which, though definite and frequently short, is in proportion to the perfection of its organization, full of enjoyment.

The laws of electricity, of chemistry, of mechanical philosophy, can explain all the phenomena of unorganized substances. Chemistry can ascertain their nature and composition, it can decompose their particles, and separate their constituent principles; it can do more, it can re-unite them, and reproduce the same mineral in the same form. But what Promethean skill can reanimate the lifeless body? Who can rearrange the organization which is once destroyed? Who can recompose the vegetable or the animal which has mouldered into dust?

Unorganized matter enjoys an independent existence. The orbs of heaven move along the firmament, and we know not if life is on their bosom. If, in our system, organized beings had never been created, if this earth had continued as in the

first days of creation, when the waters were collected together, and separated from the dry land, and no living form was seen to move on its surface, it would still have rolled along its planetary course; and even if its eternal solitudes were useless, if no voice was heard upon its hills, no footstep seen upon its plains, its movements would have been still unceasing, its progress undisturbed.

Organized beings are not independent, they are subordinate to other principles, they are subjected to innumerable casualties. Their particles appear not to subsist by themselves, but only in connexion with other particles; their existence seems only to be in relation to other existences. But while there are fixed limits to the growth and duration of organized bodies, they have, on the other hand, an internal power which enables them to repair many of the injuries they may receive, repel many of the causes of derangement and disease which surround them, and resist, for a long time, the principles which combine for their destruction.

In our investigation of organized bodies, the inquiry that meets us on the threshold, the first object of our researches is unfortunately, the most obscure, the most difficult of resolution. What is this internal power that gives to organization such inherent energy? Why is it that the most ingenious and complex machinery of human invention, the most profound combination of springs and balances and wheels, remains inert and motionless, unless acted upon by foreign impulse, while the organized forms of nature possess, within themselves, a self-moving, a self-preserving power? What is this mysterious principle which gives to substances that chemistry resolves into common elements, a new, a spontaneous, almost an inherent action-which enables organized bodies to perform so many functions; to collect, to decompose, to modify, to assimilate to their own substances, the particles of other bodies; to preserve, to perpetuate their species by the continued destruction of other species? What is this power which acquired at the first dawn of existence, at the germination of the embryo seed without consciousness, acting through life by instincts which we cannot understand; living on the waste of life; perishing, when it can no longer destroy; relinquishes, finally, to decomposition, the bodies it was accustomed to animate? What is this obscure principle which eludes the eye of the anatomist, which escapes even from the active pursuit of thought? What is life?

We know not that to man it will ever be given to comprehend the source or the principle of life. We feel its influence, we perceive its power; we can study the laws which regulate its

increase or diminution; and the researches of science are extensively directed to ascertain and remove the causes which impede or injure its necessary functions. We may labour to guard its developement, to preserve its regular action, to perpetuate its duration, until the organs themselves through which its functions are performed, shall cease to feel its excitement. But we neither know whence it has been derived, nor whither it has retired. Its origin and its termination are with its Creator.

Nothing, however, that we can observe, possesses life without organization-without a series of vessels, a system of organs, more or less simple, by which the operations of life are performed. Not only animals, therefore, but vegetables have life, for they have organs by which they procure their nourishment, enlarge by the power of assimilation their own stature, pass through their periods of infancy, of maturity, of old age; produce their own offspring, or the seed from whence that offspring must arise, and when those organs are worn out by time, or destroyed by accident, they decay and die-and their bodies, like the kindred bodies of animals, become immediately an unresisting prey to the laws of the material world-to the common operations of chemical resolution and affinity.

Is organization, therefore, life? We know not how to resolve this question, because the principles upon which its solution must depend, elude our power, and baffle our research. The composition, the combinations of the inorganic forms of matter are submitted to our examination, and their modifications apparently understood; but, the intimate arrangement and structure of sentient and living organs are among the secrets not yet entrusted to man. We know the intimate relation between organization and life, the necessary, perhaps absolute dependence of life on organization; but life often departs when the organization is, to our minutest observations, uninjured; the vital power seems exhausted or oppressed by causes that act not on the organization. While life, therefore, seems to be the result of organization, it is, most probably, a distinct principle, possessing the power of modifying this very organization by which it

acts.

Among the many opinions and speculations to which the doctrines of life have given rise, there are two to which we will advert, before we close these observations.

It has been an opinion, adopted more or less extensively, in many of the schools of philosophy, that God, originally, created a certain amount or number of molecules, particles or atoms, endued with some portion of vitality, in their own nature imperishable and indestructible, and altogether distinct from the inert

particles of matter; that every created form or species was empowered to collect and to arrange according to its peculiar structure, a definite number of these living particles, that every existing organized body is now composed of these particles, and that when any individual has been or shall be destroyed, the separated particles are prepared and destined to enter into new combinations, and assume new forms.

Even if this theory be true, it seems impossible for us to determine the degree of vitality which these particles possess, still less the source of that mysterious power which moulds them unconsciously into form. We know not whether they are homogeneous, equal in their nature and qualities, similar in their form, or whether, as would be more probable, to some may have been allotted powers of absorption, to others of contraction, to others of sensation. It is not, however, so much into the attributes of these primordial elements that we wish to inquire as into that power which can regulate them for its own purposes; it is not merely the influence of organization that we would discover, but the power which can model organization itself. Every living being has the faculty of protecting, of supporting, of partially repairing its organization, and these processes are conducted, not by the determinate action of the will, but by operations, of which each individual is insensible and unconscious. Every living being has the inherent power of converting or assimilating, according to this theory, these elementary atoms into its own substance, of applying these particles to the organs to which they appropriately belong, of forming from their combinations-leaf, or bark, or wood, or scale, or bone, or muscle, or nerve, or blood, according to its own peculiar structure. This is the ascendant power which constitutes life, its strong and appropriate, and characteristic feature; the action which no law of attraction, of cohesion, of affinity, can explain-and, as every living being has a distinct and definite form, a distinct and peculiar organization, the power which each possesses of collecting those particles which belong generally to organized bodies, and of using them to form its own essential organs, and to preserve its own peculiar structure, has been considered as constituting the life of the species. This faculty was probably imputed to each primitive form as a birthright at the period of its creation, with the privilege of transmitting, to its latest posterity, its functions and its forms. in unchangeable identity. But whilst this specific, this essential form was, in itself, distinct and unchangeable, yet, as it had to be clothed and supported during its existence by the continual accession to its frame of these elementary particles, it was neces

sarily exposed to the hazard of destruction-and, if by accident any species should perish, or if by changes in the constitution of the globe it could no longer preserve or perpetuate its race, although the number of species would be lessened, and the harmony of created forms disturbed or diminished, the sum of organized atoms would not decrease; but the portion which the extinct races might have appropriated to their own maintenance, would be distributed among other tribes, that by their multiplication the equilibrium of life should be duly and perpetually maintained.

It would be easy, while pursuing this hypothesis, to indulge in many interesting and many amusing speculations. There can be no doubt that it was from opinions like these we are considering, that the metempsychosis of the ancient philosophers was derived. The fabulous transmigration of men into animals and plants, was the allegorical veil which, in the schools of antiquity, was thrown over the most profound investigations of the operations of nature. The fable was transmitted by poetry and tradition, when the philosophy was disregarded or forgotten. The unalterable relation between destruction and reproduction, was preserved by this perpetual transmutation of particles; and this continued succession of new forms, arising from the evident destruction and decomposition of those which had already lived, gave to poetry unbounded scope for its wild and romantic creations-while philosophy, supposed that to maintain the equilibrium between organized and unorganized bodies, their peculiar and specific particles or principles were not only indestructible, but incapable, respectively of being converted into each other's substance. For, if the power of life could endue inorganic particles with vitality, impregnate them with feeling, excite them to activity, and adapt them to the purposes of organization, then rocks might serve as nutriment for man, and the earth itself, instead of the living inhabitants of its surface might furnish food for the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But the rock which moulders appears only to furnish materials for the formation of other rocks; and when organized forms decay, their particles change not into rock, but become, in their turn, the materials by which other organized forms are supported and preserved.

To these primordial elements of organized bodies, vitality is supposed to be inherent. It is the germinating principle which, in the fables of antiquity, is said to have brooded over the unformed masses of chaos-the spirit of God which moved over the surface of the waters. It was the first action of creative VOL. II. NO. 4.

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