J84 Illustrations of Nature. 



parently simple and easy, tliat although philosopliers have long 

 since shown the division to be defective, arbitrary, and incor- 

 rect, the terms animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms still 

 continue in common use, and superficial observers rest satisfied 

 with their propriety ; yet to those who look deeply into the 

 subject, such insuperable difficulties do occur, that modern na- 

 turalists reject the primary division of the vegetable from the 

 animal kingdom, and admit only two great classes, the organic 

 and the inorganic ; the one subject to the laws of chemistry, 

 the other to the laws of life. This distribution, as far as it 

 goes, is indeed just, natural, and perfectly easy ; it only wants 

 the extreme to inanimate, inorganic matter, to be added, to 

 render the arrangement philosophically complete; and thuawe 

 should enumerate, instead of the mineral, the vegetable, and 

 the animal kingdoms, the Ufeless, the living, and the spiritual ; 

 or rather, the inorganic, the organic, and the metorganic realms, 

 (vide col. 1 and 2 of table, p. 400.) 



Thus physical existences may, probably, with more accor- 

 dance to nature in theory, and more convenience to art in prac- 

 tice, be arranged in these three realms or first kingdoms ; for the 

 extremes of conceivable existence are either purely intellectual 

 or material, in which mind and matter exist alone and un- 

 connected ; the medial state is that jmean in which they are re- 

 ciprocally in intimate communion ; in which neither mind nor 

 matter is predominant, and from which central point they are 

 on either side in unequal relative proportion ; this medial state 

 is the organic realm, the extremes, the metorganic and inor- 

 ganic; the one relating to immortal, the other to lifeless beings ; 

 while the mean is both living and mortal. 



To illustrate nature generally, or even the three reigns of 

 either realm, would involve too great prolixity ; therefore, 

 leaving in this stage of the inquiry both the metorganic and inor- 

 ganic, we will confine our observations solely to the organic. 



From a perspective view of the organized creation, it is 

 immediately apparent that, as vitality is the essential charac- 

 teristic of the whole, the subdivisions can only be relatively 

 distinct; the extremes (and, therefore, the intermediate parts) 

 can only differ from each other and from their mean in degree j 



