22 NATURE AND LIFE. 



Yet nothing in the ovule reveals its hidden and potent 

 virtually. Claude Bernard, who has repeated Coste's ideas 

 on this subject, dwells strongly on the guiding force which 

 is in the egg, and those savants who agree with Robin in 

 denying this force, so far as it acts on the totality of ele- 

 ments in the embryo, regard it at least as shared, distrib- 

 uted, and acting in each of these elements separately, which, 

 at bottom, is the same thing. We see, in any case, that 

 there is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most 

 rudimentary sketch of the organized being, the fixed and 

 formed idea of those differences in choice and those sym- 

 pathies in work whose system shall build up the individual. 

 The differential coefficient of organized matter is thus of a 

 far higher order than that of mineral matter. It is this 

 which is a distinct and peculiar result from the impotence 

 which experimental science betrays more plainly every 

 day, when attempting to convert physico-chemical activi- 

 ties into energies of the vital order. Even could this con- 

 version really be effected, and it is not metaphysically 

 impossible that it might be, the existence of a spiritual 

 principle of differentiation would be in no wise put in 

 doubt. Hitherto, at least, such a conversion seems beyond 

 the reach of man. 



Something that yet more completely baffles his research, 

 while commanding too his highest admiration, is the su- 

 preme degree of complexity together with refinement of 

 that energy which is the soul. Human thought is the sum 

 of all the forces of Nature, because it assimilates them all, 

 while distinguishing between them, by the work that it 

 performs upon sensations. Sensations are to thought what 

 food is to growth. Growth is not a result of feeding ; 

 thought is not a result of sensations. Nutrition, in shap- 

 ing the living organs, determines the differentiation of the 

 concrete forms in the individual's substance ; thought, in 

 shaping general ideas, determines the differentiation of the 



