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nearest experience. Now we find that the earth and the air are 

 commonly related in the causation of life. We find in them the 

 materials of life, and of every species and form of life. These then, 

 from which life is perpetuated, we may most reasonably conclude 

 to be the sources which originally furnished life. 



30. Whether the life of man was at once formed from this in- 

 tercourse of earth and air, we would not attempt to determine when, 

 before submitting to conjecture, we were looking about for proofs. 

 But now, having confessed a weakness in the argument, we may 

 venture to string up a few reasonings. We find then that the diffe- 

 rent specimens of life are to a great extent, if not altogether, pre- 

 paratory. Thus, in the sources which we have named it exists in 

 no specific form. But it is disposed for spontaneous changes, by 

 which some of the most simple forms are produced or have an ori- 

 gin by constitution; among these we have some instances in vegeta- 

 tion, as in the growths of mosses, mucor, fungi, some aquatic weeds, 

 &c. which originate, as is believed, without seeds. The form of 

 life in these examples is one modification of that informal state in 

 which it exists in its sources. As every change of form is a change 

 of relation by which the way is prepared to another change of 

 form, so the first spontaneous formal condition of life, which arises 

 out of its elements in earth and air, is a pre-disposition to another. 

 What that other will be depends upon existing relations, upon the 

 state of causes. The possibility of the materials of life existing in- 

 formally in its sources, assuming a defined form, will not be denied 

 because we ourselves have experience of the fact. 



31. One form of life having arisen from its sources, what is its 

 next fate? Perhaps it sheds seeds and is thus perpetuated, or else 

 it dies; and what then] Simply this, that its life is preserved in 

 death, that its death is only another condition of its life. How is 

 this proved? it will be asked. The proof I shall give at length in 

 another place, suffice at present to say that it is proved in two ways: 

 first, that every change happens by causation, which implies addition 

 or diminution of properties, so that life in death is modified only, 

 and in one of these ways; and, second, that those materials with 

 which an organic life once inhered are found to furnish an organic 

 life to others of the same or of a different species. Thus much being 

 granted (and all its evidence shewn, we may be bold to say it can- 

 not be denied), this point being granted then, we find that this first 

 form of life is changed in death, and has relations which in that state, 

 which for distinction we call life, it had not. In death it exists, and 

 is operated on by the causes related witii it; and it requires no more 

 than the same kind of concurrence among causes as that which first 

 made it a specimen of formal life, again to become life in n second form. 



32. But how, it will be asked (supposing that this explanation 

 of a spiritual origin may be admitted), how does this form of a 

 principle possess itself of a corresponding material form ? This ques- 

 tion has been already answered, or nearly so, in speaking of the rela- 

 tions between the spirit and the structures, in our doctrines of tl"* 



