OUR PHYSICAL MOTIONS. 65 



and send up suitable elements for bud and blossom and 

 fruit, though it may be, and no doubt is, a subordinate 

 agency in these operations. We must, however, meekly 

 confess we cannot penetrate the mystery of Life. But 

 does this stop the line of inquiry we have pursued so far 

 in all other respects ? We think not. All the actions of 

 a plant are vital actions, and we can neither understand 

 Life, nor that kind of action to which Life is essential. 

 But it is not so of man and other animals. All the 

 actions of a man are not vital actions. His muscular 

 actions may be produced without the presence of Life. 

 They form an extension of action beyond the range of 

 trees and plants, and beyond the limited range therefore 

 of essentially vital actions. Perhaps we shall be able to 

 discover that they are as much mechanical actions as 

 those of the steam-engine and other machinery, and 

 as much accomplished by physical forces and agencies. 

 The motions of a tree or plant are only those hydraulic 

 energies by which its sap is absorbed, analyzed, distributed, 

 and applied in the development of the plant ; and in this 

 respect they are allied to those motions of the blood in 

 animals by which the vital energies are kept in operation, 

 and seem to be restricted exclusively to the processes of 

 growth or development, renovation, and reproduction. 

 In this respect, whether it be disputed that the Scriptures 

 teach science or not, there can Ite no doubt whatever that 

 they put the finger of revelation on a remarkable scientific 

 fact, not hitherto considered so fully as it ought to have 

 been, when they say of animal nature that the blood is the 

 Life thereof. If the sap of a tree be not the life of the tree, 

 its operations are so intimately united and identified with 

 the vital forces and actions of the tree as to be utterly 

 indistinguishable from it by any power of human discri- 

 mination ; and in like manner the operation of the blood 

 in animal nature is utterly indistinguishable from the vital 



