355 



them cases of suspended animation were to disguise a plain 

 fact by a metaphor. Is it meant that the onion was in a 

 swoon for 3000 years, and that the creature dried up and 

 withered for twenty-seven years, had been dead and alive at 

 the same time ? Unless this be the meaning I cannot conceive 

 any other. 



•' That one kind of life may be made to pass into another, 

 was shown by tracing the progress of vivification of food, from 

 the period of its being taken into the stomach, to that of its 

 constituting part of the animal's body. 



" Facts were adduced in support of the argument that by 

 chemical combination vitality is developed in the combining 

 particles; and in proof that the vitality of these particles be- 

 longs to them, and not to a common stock contained in the 

 body of the animal, it was shown that parts of the animal 

 body may be removed, yet still retain their vitality ; that 

 they may even be replaced, and continue to live ; nay, that 

 they may live and grow on the body of some other animal. 



" The chief principle involved in these speculations is no 

 doubt an hypothesis. But an hypothesis, in the absence of 

 an adequate induction, may be tolerated in physics, when it 

 agrees with the phenomena, and connects, in one uniform sys- 

 tem, a series of propositions which, without it, would remain 

 insulated. Under such circumstances an hypothesis has its 

 chance of being a truth, and is not to be utterly, in all cases, 

 contemned, notwithstanding the denunciation of Newton : 

 hypotheses have rendered good service in some departments 

 of physics." 



