CHAPTER I. 



UNIVERSAL LIFE, OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS 

 AND POETS. 



§ I. Primitive beliefs; the ideas of poets. — § 2. Opinions of 

 philosophers — Transition from brute to living bodies — The 

 principle of continuity: continuity by transition : continuity 

 by summation — Ideas of philosophers as to sensibility and 

 consciousness in brute bodies — The general principle of 

 homogeneity — The principle of continuity as a consequence 

 of the principle of homogeneity. 



§ I. Primitive Beliefs. Ideas of the Poets. 



The teaching of science as to the analogies between 

 brute bodies and living bodies accords with the con- 

 ceptions of the philosophers and the fancies of the 

 poets. The ancients held that all bodies in nature 

 were the constituent parts of a universal organism, 

 the macrocosm, which they compared to the human 

 microcosm. They attributed to it a principle of 

 action, the psyche, analogous to the vital principle, 

 and this psyche directed phenomena; and also an 

 intelligent principle, the nous, analogous to the soul, 

 and the nous served for the comprehension of pheno- 

 mena. This universal life and this universal soul 

 played an important part in their metaphysical 

 systems, 



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