235 



is the nature of the conversion which life suffers in again becoming 

 informal! Our business is with the first, the second question 

 belongs to the consideration of death. 



39. The first question leads us to consider the relation be- 

 tween the spirit and the materials of the structures: this subject 

 has been pretty copiously discussed under the title of Growth; 

 it requires, however, to be touched upon again in this view of the 

 relations of blood. 



40. The particles composing the textures are aggregated in 

 consequence of a relation subsisting between them and the or- 

 ganic spirit. The particles composing the textures tend of them- 

 selves not to aggregation but to separation ; it is therefore indi- 

 cated that the power which first overcomes this, their natural dis- 

 position, is the one which retains them in their aggregated state; 

 and hence the power which produces their aggregation may be 

 inferred from a knowledge of that which preserves their state of 

 cohesion. 



41. The alternatives then, viz. whether aggregation is pro- 

 duced by the living spirit or whether by a causation connected 

 with its return to informal life, may be briefly decided: as the 

 separation of organic particles takes place within a short time 

 after the living spirit has ceased, so their aggregation, upon the 

 grounds here stated, and more fully spoken of in the chapter ou 

 Growth, must be accomplished by the properties of the living 

 spirit, and not by those of informal life, which would remain, and 

 persevere in aggregating force, after the form of the living spirit 

 had passed away. The mode of this aggregation is to be further 

 investigated. 



42. As the spirit is necessarily renovated by assimilation, so 

 additional quantities of the organic particles might be incessantly 

 laid down ; but if these were to remain fixed while the spirit passed 

 away, 1st, they would impede the admission of new quantities of 

 the nutrient material to the minute spheres of life, which would 

 then in such spheres become extinct, which is not the fact; and, 

 2nd, an endless and enormous increase of bulk would be attained, 

 which also is contrary to fact. There must then, in this business 

 of assimilation and aggregation, be some limit of the latter opera- 

 tion, which we are to investigate, or else some countervailing 

 process, by which growth is restricted, and the material admitted 

 to perpetuate life wherever life exists. The following is a theory 

 by which both these objects would be supposed to be accomplished 

 in the most simple way. 



43. It supposes that, as the living spirit is incessantly reno- 

 vated by new quantities of its elements, and aggregates at the 

 same time new quantities of the structures, so as the living spirit 

 becomes informal, the particles which it has laid down or aggre- 

 gated must also be removed. 



44. Such a piece of causation would exhibit an instance of 

 that simplicity which in the operations of nature we so often meet 



