Rev. P. Keith on the Conditions of Life. 37 



and yet they are evidently endowed with Ufe. — To this we 

 will reply by the following question. Has it been proved 

 that they are not the product of generation? — If the higher 

 orders of animals, the animals with which we are best ac- 

 quainted, are evidently the product of generation, ought we 

 not to conclude from analogy, that other and inferior orders 

 of animals, with which we are less acquainted, are the product 

 of generation also ? or at the least of some process analogous to 

 it, and leading to a similar issue. On this ground we rest 

 satisfied of the legitimacy of Cuvier's conclusion. 



Organization. — A very general and very good division of 

 the bodies existing in nature, is that by which they are dis- 

 tributed into two primary classes of organized and unorganized 

 productions. If we suppose a gradation by which all natural 

 bodies are placed according to their rank in the scale of being, 

 the unorganized substances will be found at the bottom. They 

 exhibit no indications of life, no susceptibility to impressions, 

 no sympathy of parts, no functions. Still they possess a de- 

 finite number of properties by which they are readily charac- 

 terized. Their properties are physical or chemical ; — gravity, 

 elasticity, mobility, affinities, attractions, repulsions. They 

 display also a gradation among themselves. Some of them 

 are found merely in shapeless lumps that accident seems to 

 have thrown together, and that accident may again disperse ; 

 — masses of rock, masses of minerals. Others are found to pre- 

 sent themselves in regular and symmetrical forms, whether in- 

 dividually or in the aggregate; — crj^stals, masses of crystals. 

 If we regard the fabric of the earth which we inhabit, we find 

 that it is moulded into an immense and globular mass ; but it 

 is destitute of all organization, as are the fluids with which it 

 is watered, and the gases with which it is surrounded. The 

 same remark may be extended, as we presume, to the heavenly 

 bodies also ; — the sun, the stars, the planets, and their sa- 

 tellites. 



Organized bodies form the second class. They stand higher 

 in the scale of being, and are endowed with nobler properties. 

 They are the sole receptacles of life, which has never yet dis- 

 played itself except in such fabrics. They consist, in their 

 living state, partly of solitis, and partly of fluids in motion. 

 The fluids are the materials out of which the solids have been 

 formed, — chyle, blood, — sap, proper juice ; or they are secre- 

 tions, or exhalations, or excrements coming ironi the solids ; 

 — bile, urine, perspirable matter, — gum, nectar, perspirable 

 matter. In the aggregate they form a fabric which is com- 

 posed ol a definite system of individual fabrics or organs, 

 which tonslilutc in their asscniblagc an individual whole: — a 



plant, 



