156 



mechanical structures are concerned, is to produce merely a change 

 of place, some modification of continuity. 



16. In order to be satisfied of the truth of this principle, we 

 have only to consider what would be the effects of mechanical 

 agencies upon the textures, whether internal or external, under a 

 privation of the spirit which is allied with them. A needle thrust 

 into the flesh during life produces pain; life extinct, its effect upon 

 the textures is to displace coherent particles: a piece of glass buried 

 in a living muscle produces pain and all the phenomena of inflam- 

 mation; in a dead muscle, it merely separates fibres which were 

 before attached : a stone in the living bladder occasions excruciating 

 and complicated disease; in the dead bladder, the stone rests upoi 

 its coats, producing a pressure according to its weight, modified by 

 its shape and asperities. 



17. If we would understand how the spiritual properties are 

 affected by these mechanical agencies, we must ascertain what is the 

 nature of the relation between these properties aad the place of the 

 organic particles. 



18, Now it is obvious that an organic particle, being merely 

 the seaj: of a principle of life, can in this relation impart no influence 

 to the principle which it contains ; by which is further meant that 

 without the intervention of some other agency, provided the particle 

 continues to retain its portion of the principle, the latter cannot be 

 affected by any change which the former might undergo. Thus, to 

 return to one of our examples, if a needle should be thrust into the 

 flesh, its effect upon the mechanism is to separate particles which 

 before cohered \ the particles separated being still possessed of their 

 vital properties, possess them in one place instead of another, and In 

 this simple mechanical relation no further change can happen in 

 them. But in the living state further changes do happen in them: 

 pain, inflammation, &c. result in structures where these did not 

 before exist. But, as just shewn, these phenomena cannot arise 

 from the mere mechanical relation; it is then to be investigated by 

 what laws they do occur. 



lp f 4 s ^e solid particles are the respective seats of cor- 

 responding spheres of the spirit, so by a change in the relative 

 situation of the particles a similar change is produced in the relative 

 minute spheres pf the spirit. 



20. If it cap be shewn that the spirit in the minutest spheres 

 is essentially related with contiguous or distant spheres of the spirit, 

 we shall readily conceive how the condition of the spirit njaj be 

 locally disturbed by an operation upon the textures. 



21. The truth of this spiritual relation is confirmed by the 

 following facts: 1st, the function of a nerve, for example, is modi- 

 fied or lost by mechanical injury, or mechanical interposition, 

 proving that a faculty residing in a particular seat is not perfected 

 in that seat, but has a remoter dependence ; 2nd, the influence of a 

 mechanical injury is not confined to tlip beat of such injury, but is 

 participated in both by contiguous and distant spheres of the spirit ; 



