iir. 



1. There is no iiiieqiiivocal ground of presumption, that chemical 

 elements are endowed with other than chemical tendencies, from a 

 supposition that to endow them with organic tendencies, as well, would 

 be a greater display of creative Nvisdom, — because simplicity is as much 

 required in a display of ingenious intelligence as comprehensiveness, 



2. Mineral elements can arrange but cannot organize themselves. An 

 arrangement, as in a crystal, is only a repetition of an unchanged tendency, 

 and every increment is without a variable. But in an organization there 

 is a continual difference in the disposition of the same element, and no 

 element arrives at its destination except thi'ough the function of an organ 

 previously formed, and therefore a mineral element does not organize, 

 on the contrary it is organized. Minerals in general cannot even be 

 assimilated into an animal body, unless they have been previously 

 organized as vegetables, although in the animal the organs exist for the 

 purpose of assimilation ; and therefore how much less could they of their 

 proper tendencies form an animal, or confer the power of an animal 

 organ. What they have not they cannot give. The organic power, 

 therefore, is taken to be a distinct and specific entity, an energetic 

 species controlling and guiding the polarities of chemical elements, to 

 build them up into its own form, 



3. The organic power is antagonistic to chemical affinity. Chemical 

 activity alone tends to a state of rest, as the action of gravity does ; and 

 the elements would ultimately repose in the embraces of the highest 

 affinities ; but now, coming under the dominion of the organic power, 

 it counteracts the highest affinity and liberates the elements for other 

 unions. On the other hand, no sooner has the superior authority 

 abdicated and left the body organic to the influence of the proper 

 dispositions of its constituent individuals, than they break out in open 

 insurrection, and turn it into a mass of disorder and corruption. 



4. The organic power is different from mineral, because of the varia- 

 tion of phases. Minerals may aggregate and ciystalise indefinitely, like 

 the salt rocks of Cheshire, and the last addition be as bright and perfect 

 as the first. In vegetables and animals the form is definite within small 

 limits,' — and this is true of the size ; mineral powers know nothing of age. 

 Organic structures run through a continuous variation of phases from 

 their origin to their dissolution. The former energies are ever fresh 

 and new; were the power of our life identical with them, we should 

 rejoice ever in the bloom of youth, and wrinldes and hoar hairs would 

 be unknown to us. 



5. The power that organizes has a comprehensive unity. The unity 

 appears from the convergence of all the control to one end, the building 



