X PREFACE. 



perience, we rely upon our inferences, our confidence in which, 

 as will hereafter appear, is sometimes very little less than that 

 which is yielded to the objects of positive experience. 



Descending then from the appeal to experience, it is to be 

 inquired whether, upon the ground of analogy to our experi- 

 ence, we are furnished with any proof that the properties of 

 life may exist independently of matter ? Assuming the postu- 

 latum, which it is hereafter attempted to establish, that nothing 

 which has an existence can cease to exist, the question may 

 be thus answered : As the properties of life are real agents, 

 as their agency is proved by their being the causes of certain 

 effects which are imputed to them, it is to be inferred, in agree- 

 ment with an universal law, that although* these properties 

 might change their form, they cannot cease to exist. During 

 life, these properties, as they are consumed, either escape from 

 the body or else pass into the structures. If the former, their 

 existence then becomes separate or distinct from the organized 

 matter : if the latter, as the structures must possess these pro- 

 perties at the time of death ; as at this period not only the 

 arrangement of the material fabric is broken up, but the sub- 

 stance itself will in time become gaseous, or cease to be matter ; 

 so, under either alternative, it appears that the properties of 

 life may exist when they are no longer connected with a sub- 

 stance answering to the definition of matter. It appears that 

 the organized substance, matter itself, might change its form, 

 and cease to be material : and consequently, as the properties 

 formerly in alliance with this matter continue to exist, their 

 existence outlives their connection with matter. Leaving 

 however these questions, in which I feel no great interest, it is 

 proper here to make such apologies or explanations as the 

 pages of this volume may appear to stand in need of, rather 

 than to enter, in this place, upon the discussion of opinions 

 which will not be found hereafter to have been totally 

 overlooked. 



It has been hinted that, whatever the order of the connec- 

 tion between life and the primitive material aggregation might 

 have been, whether the oyum >vas fust formed in the ovarium 



