560 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



poteut virtuality. Claude Bernard, who has repeated Coste's ideas on 

 this subject, dwells strongly on the guiding force which is in the egg, 

 and those savants who agree with Iiobin in denying this force, so far 

 as it acts on the totality of elements in the embryo, regard it at least 

 as shared, distributed, and acting in each of these elements separately, 

 which, at bottom, is the same thing. We see, in any case, that there 

 is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most rudimentary 

 sketch of the organized being, the fixed and formed idea of those 

 differences in choice and those sympathies in work whose system 

 shall build up the individual. The differential coefficient of organized 

 matter is thus of a far higher order than that of mineral matter. It is 

 this which is a distinct and peculiar result from the impotence which 

 experimental science betrays more plainly every day, when attempt- 

 ing to convert physico-chemical activities into energies of the vital 

 order. Even could this conversion really be effected, and it is not 

 metaphysically impossible that it might be, the existence of a spiritual 

 principle of differentiation would be in no wise put in doubt. Hitherto, 

 at least, such a conversion seems beyond the reach of man. 



Something that yet more completely baffles his research, while 

 commanding too his highest admiration, is the supreme degree of com- 

 plexity together with refinement of that energy which is the soul. 

 Human thought is the sum of all the forces of Nature, because it as- 

 similates them all, while distinguishing between them, by the work 

 that it performs upon sensations. Sensations are to thought what food 

 is to growth. Growth is not a result of feeding ; thought is not a re- 

 sult of sensations. Nutrition, in shaping the living organs, determines 

 the differentiation of the concrete forms in the individual's substance ; 

 thought, in shaping general ideas, determines the differentiation of the 

 abstract forces in the world. Thus thinking energy is as much supe- 

 rior to sensations as nutritive energy is to aliments. In another order 

 of thought, we might compare the soul to a paper covered with writing 

 in sympathetic ink. At ordinary temperatures, the letters are unseen, 

 but they appear in fine color whenever brought near the fire. So the 

 soul has within itself dim marks and confused shapes which sensation 

 tints and brightens. We have seen that, in the mucous drop, a two 

 hundred and fiftieth part of an inch through, called the ovule, the 

 forces and tendencies of the whole nutritive and intellectual life of man 

 lie prisoned and asleep. So, too, in that force without form or exten- 

 sion, which is the soul, there dwells a miniature picture of the whole 

 universe, and, by some mystic grace of God, a dream, as it were, of 

 that God himself. Thought consists in becoming acquainted with all 

 the details of that picture in little, and unfolding its meaning. Thus, 

 that which makes the whole reality of material things is form, and 

 form, such as it is shown to us in the world, is at once a principle of 

 differentiation and a principle of agreement ; in other words, it is the 

 work of an intelligence. Body and motion are mere phenomena. The 



