74 Instinct, 



ifested mainly In their outward organs, or in the 

 function of the mature organ. But a Hke control- 

 ling power is manifested in building up every part 

 of the plant, so as to form a complete whole, of com- 

 plex parts. And of this power we propose now to 

 speak. In the living plant or animal, even of the 

 lowest type, we seem to have an immaterial entity 

 — an essence to which we refer the peculiar charac- 

 teristics of these organic beings. In the mineral 

 kingdom we find the force of cohesion giving us dif- 

 ferent forms of crystals from different elements or 

 compounds ; but here in the organic kingdom we 

 have life, a something which we hardly dare to de- 

 fine, in these days of the conservation and unifica- 

 tion of forces — but it is a something that from es- 

 sentially the same elements, gives us the myriad 

 forms of plants and animals, from the humblest 

 Algae to man himself. If we cannot fully under- 

 stand and define this agency, we can enumerate 

 some of its results. It is from the careful study of 

 these alone that we can hope for more knowledge 

 of the agency itself. We now see this agency mani- 

 fested in the production of distinct forms or kinds of 

 beings. For each kind there is also a plan of struct- 

 ure common to all individuals of that kind. Each in- 

 dividual produced by this principle has a cycle of op- 

 erations that brings the being to individual perfection , 

 then to weakness, then to death, followed by the de- 

 struction of the body by chemical ageyicies. Before 

 death comes in regular order of nature by the comple- 

 tion of the cycle of changes, there is some relationship 

 of that being to the origin of anotJier of the same ki^id 



