BY A. JEFFERIS TURNER, M.D. 33 



Spittle, or by pricking it gently with a Pin or Needle. I answer, 

 it may be in these Instances, the scattering Spirits remaining in 

 the Heart, may for a time, being agitated by Heat, cause these 

 faint pulsations, tho' I should rather attribute them to a plastick 

 Nature or Vital Principle." This "plastick Nature" was a great 

 comfort to John Ray, by its means he releases himself from every 

 difficulty. It answers, I apprehend, exactly to the term 

 " vitality " or " vital force," which, till quite recent years, could 

 always be invoked to cut the knots of physiological puzzles. But 

 on the very next page to the quotation given is an extract from 

 a contemjDorary work by Mr. Boyle (whether the same as the 

 physicist who enunciated Boyle's law of the volume of gases I 

 have not ascertained), in which a very different order of ideas is 

 introduced. " I think it probable," writes Boyle, " that the 

 great and wise Author of Things did, when he first formed the 

 Universe and undistinguished Matter into the World, put its 

 Parts into various Motions, whereby they were necessarily 

 divided into numberless Portions of differing Bulks, Figures and 

 Situations in Respect of each other ; and that by his infinite 

 Wisdom and Power he did so guide and overule the Motions of 

 these Parts at the Beginning of Things, as that (whether in a 

 shorter or longer Time Reason cannot determine) they were 

 finally disposed into that beautiful and orderly Frame that we 

 call the World ; among whose Parts some were so curiously 

 contrived as to be fit to become the Seeds or seminal Principles 

 of Plants and Animals. And I further conceive that he settled 

 such Laws or Rules of local Motion among the Parts of the 

 Universal Matter, that by his ordinary and preserving Concourse 

 the several Parts of the Universe thus once completed, should be 

 able to maintain the great Construction or System and Economy 

 of the Mundane Bodies and propagate the Species of living 

 Creatures." Ray's reply to this hypothesis is so curious that I 

 must quote it: — " This Hypothesis, I say, I cannot fully acquisce 

 in, because an intelligent Being seems to me requisite to execute 

 the Laws of Motion ; for first Motion being a fluent Thing, and 

 one Part of its Duration being absolutely independent upon 

 another, it doth not follow that because anything moves this 

 Moment it must necessarily continue to do so for the next, unless 

 it were actually possessed of its future Motion, which is a 

 contradiction ; but it stands in as much Need of an Efficient to 

 preserve and continue its Motion as it did at first to produce it. 



