regulating the Vital and Physical Phenomena. 351 



common tendency, the ultimate happiness of the creatures of 

 Infinite Benevolence. It cannot be regarded as an improbabi- 

 lity, that the other spheres and systems, whose countless multi- 

 tudes, revealed by the aid of science, impress our minds with 

 the nearest approach to the conception of infinity of which our 

 finite comprehension is capable, are peopled with beings, if not 

 similar in structure to ourselves, at least equally worthy of the 

 Creator's care. In the government of our own planet, itself 

 but a point in the vast universe, we are able to recognise, to 

 some small extent, the laws by which its physical changes are 

 guided ; and we discern faint glimmerings of those by which 

 the moral condition of sentient beings is controlled. So far as 

 we can understand the mutual adaptation of these laws, we 

 every Avhere see them working towards the same end ; and we 

 entertain the highest anticipations of the beauty and harmony 

 which will be revealed to us when our imperfect knowledge 

 shall be extended and corrected by the light of Eternal Truth. 

 Should we not consider it degrading to the dignity of Infinite 

 Wisdom to suppose, that, at the creation of each world, he had 

 found it necessary to delegate to a subordinate the control over 

 its working, instead of at once impressing upon its elements 

 those simple properties, from whose mutual actions, foreseen 

 and provided for in the laws according to which they operate, 

 all the varieties of change which it was His intention to pro- 

 duce, should necessarily result. The application of this argu- 

 ment to the present subject is too obvious to require further 

 development. 



S3. We have now to consider in what relation the vital pro- 

 perties of the various tissues of which a living body is compo- 

 sed stand towards the peculiar form in which the molecules of 

 those tissues are arranged, and the peculiar character of the 

 chemical combinations of which they are composed ; in a single 

 word, their organization. It appears to us that much discus- 

 sion on this subject might have been spared had more attention 

 been paid to the true meaning of the terms employed. It has 

 been said by some that vital properties are superadded to or- 

 ganised matter. This supposes the distinct existence of the 

 property, and is but another form of the doctrine of the vital 

 principle. If the property be nothing but the matter itself in 



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