
‘ OF THE DOCTRINE OF VITAL AFFINITY. 387 
with that peculiar structure, endowed with still more peculiar properties, to 
which we give the name of a living Nervous System; and he has established 
laws, in the execution of which the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom 
bears its part, according to which infinite varieties and endless successions of 
nervous systems shall be engendered and supported from a limited quantity of 
the matter originally contained in the atmosphere surrounding our globe,—shall be 
nourished, lodged, protected, and enabled to satisfy the wants and to obey the 
will of their immaterial inhabitants; but all this innovation on the laws regu- 
lating the matter previously existing on the earth’s surface is only transient. 
The same portions of matter which are thus employed, whether they pass through 
vegetable structures only, or minister to the support both of vegetables and ani- 
mals, are restored unchanged to the reservoir whence they came,—in the latter 
case more rapidly and frequently, and during the life of the structures thus main- 
tained,—and are ready to run the same course again when again placed in pre- 
sence of living beings. Like the figures of snow into which the imagination of 
Sourney figured the magician Oxsa, breathing the breath of life every morning, 
that they might people the surrounding wilderness, and charm the solitude of 
his daughter Luma, they all receive vitality only for their day, and 
*« Hiver when night closes, 
They melt away again ;” 
and such of them as have served as the habitations of mental acts or feelings then 
“restore the spirit to Him who gave it.” The provisions for the temporary 
maintenance, for the protection and comfort, for the sentient and mental enjoy- 
ments, and the eternal reproduction, of this infinite number and variety of sensi- 
tive beings, out of a limited quantity of certain chemical elements contained in 
the earth’s atmosphere,—and for the progressive development of the human mind. 
as the destined lord of this Creation,—are the great Laws of Life, the investiga- 
tion of which is the object of this science. The power of perceiving their adapta- 
tion to their object, and of appreciating the grandeur of the design, is one of the 
highest privileges of our nature; and without pretending to be qualified to assign 
the respective merit of the different physiologists, geologists, and chemists, who 
have illustrated the different parts of this general view of life—of Cuvier, Da.- 
ton, Prout, Lirsic, Bronaniart, Prevost, Dumas, and Bousincavut, and their 
numerous friends and followers,—we may all congratulate ourselves on having 
lived in the age when so much of the designs of Infinite Wisdom for the regula- 
tion of this world has been made manifest to mankind. 
But when we inquire a little more minutely into the nature of the changes 
constituting this great vital circulation, I think it must appear obvious, that 
_ the most essential of all are and must be strictly chemical; and it seems to me 
_ that the grandeur of the design is not clearly perceived, unless we fix atten- 
