PREPACK. IX 



On this, as on every question, it is proper that we should 

 consult our experience ; and appealing to this testimony, it 

 must be decided that we have no proof of the existence of life 

 in a form, capable of producing those phenomena from which 

 its existence is inferred, except in connection with matter. In 

 every stage of the existence of man, for example, beginning 

 from the ovum as the first perceptible nucleus of his formation, 

 our experience furnishes us with no proof of an independent 

 existence of the properties of life, or an existence separate 

 from matter. In this earliest stage, the future man consists of 

 a few molecules, of no assignable arrangement, in connection 

 with which are the properties which concur to the future de- 

 velopment and functions of the animal. We certainly have 

 no experience that these properties are superadded to a few 

 particles in the ovarium, which previously existed without 

 them, and received these properties subsequently to their own 

 material aggregation. We have no experience of this ; yet the 

 circumstance may hereafter be made to appear, on other 

 grounds, not improbable. Our experience upon the point is, 

 that, in the first recognizable stage of the existence of an ani- 

 mal, properties of life, or disposing to the future functions 

 which characterize life, are in connection with matter; and 

 this connection endures as long as the characteristic pheno- 

 mena of life continue to be displayed. 



If it be asked, can the properties of life have a separate 

 existence from matter ? this question is to be discussed on 

 other grounds than those which apply to the question, do 

 the properties which accomplish the functions of life exist, 

 except in connection with matter ? With respect to the last 

 question, our reply is that the phenomena of life are the result 

 of a relation between certain properties and matter ; that we 

 have no experience of life, or of the existence of vital proper- 

 ties, except in connection with matter: this however may 

 happen for the same reason that we have no experience, or but 

 an equivocal one, of any thing else except in connection with 

 matter, viz. that the senses with which we are furnished have 

 a perceptive relation only with matter. But, in defect of ex- 



