352 



Almighty infixed vitality in matter along with its other pro- 

 perties: forthe command given to all created things, vegetable 

 and animal,* to increase and multiply, must have been ac- 

 companied by the endowment of matter with the means of 

 obeying the mandate, namely, with the vital principle. As 

 matter could not become alive of its own accord, the vital 

 principle must have been either infixed in it as an universal 

 and permanent property, or it must be infused into it in 

 each individual case of vivification by divine power. But 

 God must have intended that the command to increase and 

 multiply should be carried into effect without his further in- 

 terposition in each particular instance ; for if this were not 

 intended there would have been no occasion for the general 

 order given to organized beings to multiply. There must be 

 something congenial to the human mind in the idea that life is 

 one of the elements of which matter is composed ; it has been 

 shown that it was a principle in the philosophy of the ancient 

 Egyptians, of the Pythagoreans, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, 

 the Platonists, the Pantheists, the Hylozoists, and the Magi. 

 It was an accredited opinion of many eminent moderns, as 

 Kepler, Hunter, and Coleridge ; and it is still entertained by 

 Bremser and a host of others. 



" This view of the subject advances us one step towards 

 the explanation of the phenomena of vivification ; for it is 

 more easy to comprehend the intension and remission of a 

 variable quality than its first creation. If life exist as a pro- 

 perty of matter, we can understand that it may be modified in 

 a variety of ways, according to the degree of vitality with 

 which the animal or vegetable is to be endued. The kind of 

 life which I suppose to exist in inorganic matter, and which 

 may be called elementary life, is of the lowest character, more 

 feeble than that of the meanest vegetable existence ; it is here 

 conceived to be one of the properties of matter, and to be sub- 



• See Gen. i. 11, 20, 24,28. 



