•224 DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 



immediate consciousness of a supreme and eternal unity is the primary 

 standard by which we distinguish tlie just, the trrie, and the beautiful. 

 Without this principle we should indeed be incapable of pursuing any 

 general inquiry and of forming any judgement, so that demonstration and 

 science can exist for those only who recognise a positive and supreme 

 principle. We hold, therefore, that the true end of scientific inquiry 

 (so far as it is to furnish explanation) is not to define and demonstrate 

 the highest principle, but to trace other truths up to tliis, to show the 

 harmony which, exists between nature and mind, or to discover a unity 

 of law in the multiplicity of phaenomena. 



It is hoped that these general remarks may be sufficient to indicate 

 the guiding principle of the following inquiries, which, being designed 

 to lead to a clear conception of Life in general, and its single forms in 

 particular, are here recommended by their author to the friendly atten- 

 tion and examination of medical men and naturalists, previously to 

 their being, perhaps, at some future time, presented by himself or by 

 some one else, in that strictly scientific form which is found so indispen- 

 sably necessary to all who would penetrate the essence of nature, and 

 obtain, instead of the vague and negative notions which commonly 

 prevail, a distinct and positive knowledge. 



If, with this view, we direct our attention to one only of the end- 

 less variety of forms which life assumes ; if we observe, for instance, 

 liow a plant through internal instinct and under external relations un- 

 folds itself from an obscure and insignificant seed, how its parts mul- 

 tiply, and how their organization becomes progressively more and more 

 refined, until it reaches its acme in the flower, where the plastic power 

 again concentrates itself into a seed, and thus closes the circle of its 

 teing in that form out of which it had first issued, we find throughout 

 this chain of jjhaenomena an internal pervading princijile, a certain de- 

 terminate succession, a regularity which compels us to expound all these 

 movements, changes, and developments as parts of a whole, as the ope- 

 rations of one internal universal cause in which all others are compre- 

 hended. It is evident that this internal, this essential and efficient 

 principle can be no single thing, such ,as the body of the plant, the 

 chemical change of its substance, or the circulation of its sap, and 

 still less the effect of external influences, but rather all these together — 

 a something in which all these inhere as their common cause, and which 

 we characterize as a unity by the generic ajipellation life. Hence it is 

 easy to perceive how erroneous it would be, for instance, to suppose the 

 plant first organized, and life then added to it as an attribute and con- 

 sequently as something extrinsic, nearly in the same manner as we should 

 conceive of a machine as a thing consisting of several jiarts put together 

 and possessing, at first, no inherent power of acting, but having this 

 power imparted to it when it is completed. On the contrary, life is 

 necessarily the original principle, and the body one of its paiticular 



