CONCLUSION. 423 



secondary agency it must use matter to act on matter. 

 We may place the hand on an object, and vainly by force 

 of will endeavour, because our vital power is placed in 

 simple contact with it, to make that object move. We 

 must use the physical power of the hand to compel the 

 motion we require ; so that the will, without the physical 

 agency, is practically nothing. But in such a case as the 

 reproduction of animal forms which has just been referred 

 to, how divisible must this vital principle Life be, which 

 yet itself requires no physical space to contain it ! The 

 divisibility of matter is a fact obvious and apparent, but 

 this divisibility of life, associated as it is in man with an 

 equally extensive and incomprehensible divisibility of 

 mind and feeling, is a metaphysical phenomenon in- 

 herently all that importantly and essentially constitutes 

 ourselves before which the facts of natural magic within 

 their physical limits dwarf into insignificance, and which 

 makes us, even in this life, denizens of a reality wholly 

 beyond their range. 



The philosophers of fixity would tell us that two and 

 two cannot make any other number than four ; that it 

 is impossible they can make any other number even with 

 God, and that Omnipotence itself has here a limit. How 

 would such theorists of the abstract-absolute explain that 

 demonstration of Omnipotence in the concrete, by which 

 life in the Polypes and Annelides is capable of being 

 subdivided from one life into many distinct and inde- 

 pendent lives ? Even accepting the theory that a polype 

 may be a combination of many lives in one, this explana- 

 tion, if it could be substantiated in that case, would not 

 apply to a worm to the same extent. For even assuming 

 that a worm as a hermaphrodite is a duplex animal, or 

 two animals in one, that fact would not explain how by 

 being cut in halves it became two such duplex animals 

 instead of one, or four animals instead of two. We can 



