336 On Animal Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man, 



cial adjustment connected Avith organic life. There are many unions 

 which do not involve the idea of adju:*tment, or which involve it only 

 in the most rudimentary form. The mere chemical union of two or 

 more elements — unless under special conditions — is not properly an 

 adjustment. We should not naturally call the formation of rust an 

 adjustment between the oxygen of the atmophere and metallic iron. 

 When the combinations effected by the play of chemical affinities are 

 brought about by the selection of elements so placed within reach of 

 each other's reactions as to result in a given product, then that pro- 

 duct would be accurately described as the result of co-ordmation and 

 adjustment. But the kind of co-ordination and adjustment which ap- 

 pear in the facts of life is of a still higher and more complicated kind 

 than this. Whatever the relationship may be between living organ- 

 isms and the elements, or elementary forces of external nature, it cer- 

 tainly is not the relationship of mere chemical affinities. On the con- 

 trary, the unions which these affinities themselves produce can only be 

 reached through the dissolution and destruction of living bodies. The 

 subjection of chemical forces to the maintenance of a seperate individ- 

 uality is of the very essence of life. The destruction of that separate- 

 ness is of the very essence of death. It is not life, but the cessation of 

 life, which, in this sense and after this manner, unites the elements of 

 the body with the elements around it. There is indeed an adjust- 

 ment — a close and intricate adjustment — between these and the living 

 body ; but it is an adjustment of them under the controlling energy of 

 a power which cannot hd identified with any other, and always presents 

 phenomena peculiar to itself Under that power we see that the laws 

 and forces of chemical affinity, as 'exhibited apart from life, are held, 

 as it were, to service — compelled, indeed, to minister, but not allowed 

 to rule. Through an infinite variety of organisms, this mysterious 

 subordination is maintained, ministering through an ascending series 

 to higher and higher grades of sensation, perception, consciousness, and 

 thought. 



And here we come in sight of the highest adjustment of all. Sen- 

 sation, perception, consciousness, and thought, if they be not the 

 very essence of life, are at least in their order its highest accompani- , 

 ment and result. They are the ultimate phenomena, if they be not 

 the final realities, to which all the les.ser adjustments are themselves 

 adjusted. For as the elementary substances and the elementary for- 

 ces of Nature which are used in the building of the body are they held 

 by the energies of life under a special and peculiar relation to those same 

 elements outside the body, so also are they held in peculiar relations to 

 those characteristic powers which are the rudimentary faculties of mind. 



