XX PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



" But we cannot stop at vegetable life ; for this is the source, 

 mediate or immediate, of all animal life. In the animal body, vege- 

 table substances are brought again into contact with their beloved 

 oxygen, and they burn within us, as a fire burns in a grate. This 

 is the source of all animal power, and the forces in play are the 

 same in kind as those which operate in inorganic nature. In the 

 plant the clock is wound up, in the animal it runs down. In the 

 plant the atoms are separated, in the animal they recombine." 

 (p. 431.) 



The sun " rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and 

 through it the animal. The lilies of the field are his workmanship, 

 the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. 

 He forms the muscle ; he urges the blood ; he builds the brain. 

 His fleetness is in the lion's foot; he springs in the panther; he 

 soars in the eagle ; he glides in the snake. He builds the forest, 

 and hews it down, — the power which raised the tree, and which 

 wields the axe, being one and the same. The clover sprouts and 

 blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation 

 of the same force." (p. 432.) 



IS'otwith standing the assertion to the contrary, it must be ad- 

 mitted that there is here a little of poetry mixed with rigid 

 mechanical truth ; and we, as special investigators of the complex 

 phenomena of animal and vegetable life and living beings, ought 

 not to allow this quiet and summary dismissal of what is ordinarily, 

 though perhaps erroneously, called " vital force " without remark. 

 Life may not be a force in the sense which natural philosophers 

 give to the term, but it is a power which so materially modifies 

 the action of heat-force, that it comes within the general and more 

 popular meaning of the word. Life cannot indeed be set in action 

 without the operation of heat-force ; but, on the other hand, the 

 sun cannot build a tree without the assistance of life. What life 

 reaUy is we do not know : its origin is probably beyond our inves- 

 tigation ; but its existence and contiuu.ity cannot be denied. Not- 

 withstanding the objections of heterogenists, to which I had 

 occasion last year to allude, I cannot but remind you that in the 

 present state of science we have as yet no prospect of proofs that 

 any new life is created, that any new living being is built, by the 

 sun or any other for(?e, out of matter organic or inorganic. Life 

 is continuous, and has been so from a period beyond human cog- 

 nizance. We witness its cessation, but it has never been known 

 to commence. Every new being grows out of, and is a portion 

 detached from, a preexisting one. We cannot even fix precisely 

 the moment when its independent life commences. It is not when 



