CHAP VIII.] LIKENESSES IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 277 



of speech now current respecting force and its so-called 

 &quot;transformations,&quot; it may be said that the cosraical forces of 

 all kinds unite and &quot; transform &quot; themselves in each living 

 creature into a single force which, regarded abstractedly, 

 may be said to be the dynamical side of such creature. 



If we use the mode of speech of an older philosophy, we 

 may say that the active powers of the cosmos exer- or-soui-in 

 cising themselves upon matter in a duly prepared eachanimal - 

 condition, evolve from a latent potential state, into active, 

 temporary existence, a peculiar active power, the &quot; soul &quot; of 

 an individual animal or plant, which endures as long as and 

 no longer than the corporeal frame of the organism preserves 

 its due integrity, that integrity and that activity necessarily 

 arising, co-existing, varying and disappearing together, like 

 the convexities and concavities of a vessel of blown glass. It 

 has been urged in the preceding chapter that the body of 

 each living animal is really a unity, a continuum, one living 

 whole. Congruous with this conception is the belief that 

 the active force of each living animal is really a unity, one 

 indivisible whole that it is not a plexus of different forces 

 temporarily aggregated, but a single form of force resulting 

 for a time from the play of all other forces, and destined to 

 disappear when, simultaneously with such disappearance, the 

 active powers of the various substances into which the 

 animal s body decomposes show themselves again as the 

 various chemical and other physical forces which are the 

 activities of the substances into which the body dissolves. 



The reasonableness of this view is corroborated by some 

 excellent remarks made by Mr. Lewes on a kindred 

 subject. It is commonly asserted that substances 

 such as oxygen and hydrogen in water really persist, though 

 seeming to have disappeared, and their reappearance on the 

 dissolution of water is held to be a proof of their never having 

 ceased to exist. This view (which Mr. Lewes disputes) may 

 be said to be a parallel view to that which represents an 

 apparently single force (a living animal) to be not what it 

 appears to be, but, instead, a mere plexus of physical forces. 



