64 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



heart, tlie stomach, the lungs, the liver, and numerous 

 other departments of our physical system move and 

 operate by involuntary action over which the Will has no 

 direct influence or control. So that Consciousness or 

 Will are not the forces by which these physical operations 

 are performed, and have no presiding power over them. 

 We know but of four departments of human existence 

 the Life, the Mind, the Feeling, and the Material body ; 

 but these operating forces of our physical system are 

 obviously not fruits of either the mind or the feeling. 

 Are they, then, part of the Life ? We have no means of 

 discovering that they are, but we have some reasons for 

 concluding that they are not. The dead stomach has 

 been made to digest under the action of electricity, 

 therefore electricity can to some extent supply the 

 necessary force involved in its action without life. 

 Besides, its action is a physical action, and Life is not 

 physical, nor inherent in, nor an attribute of, physical 

 matter. No doubt life exists in a tree, and controls its 

 vital actions, which are its only actions ; but the force of 

 those actions even in a tree is a physical force, and it is 

 impossible to perceive how Life, which is not a physical 

 element, can be a physical force. Yet it is here that the 

 difficulty presents itself in its profoundest form, and here, 

 if at all, that we are bound, as far as possible, to reason it 

 out. Life is not inherent in vegetation, but if life be 

 withdrawn from any member of the Vegetable World its 

 whole forces are suspended, and their whole motions 

 suppressed. It is not physical, and hence not a physical 

 force ; yet when it is present there is physical force when 

 it is absent there is none. Must our reason here recede 

 before the great mystery of Life, and confess itself power- 

 less ? Electricity will kill a tree, but it will not enable 

 it to perform any of the operations of its vitality. It will 

 not make the roots of a plant digest and absorb pabulum, 



