348 ANIMAL NATURE OF DIATOMEJE. 



Diatomeac, and the other mineral elements which are 

 found united with organic tissues both of animals and 

 plants, represent the combination of the inorganic with 

 the organic kingdom. According as the one or the other 

 prevails, life or death is triumphant. The word mineral 

 is in this instance so exalted, as to signify, not an in- 

 tellectual abstraction, but something unknown, ideal, 

 metaphysical. With the same right that he terms phos- 

 phate of lime or silica mineral, I can equally apply the 

 word mineral to carbon, hydrogen, or to the triple com- 

 bination of 0. H. and C., or the quadruple combination 

 O. H. C. A.., since these substances also, as well as the 

 former, do not solely of themselves manifest those general 

 properties which we comprehend in the abstract ex- 

 pression Life. Nor ought we to allow ourselves to be 

 deluded by the abuse with which chemists apply the 

 word organic to some material elements of living beings. 

 It is a convenient but dangerous mode of expression. 

 The same remote elements constitute living and dead 

 bodies ; and admitting that some combinations are found 

 in the former which are wanting in the latter, and that 

 others can by no means be produced artificially, still 

 what we term life does not reside solely in these. The 

 same chemical combination may be alive or dead, without 

 any knowledge of the cause on our part. It is only by 

 comparing this with other known facts, and not by ob- 

 servation, that we suppose its proximate cause to be the 

 mutual arrangements and the motion of molecules. So 

 that, whenever any substance forms an integral portion 

 of the tissues of a living being, it does not belong to the 

 mineral kingdom, but to this being, and therefore to the 

 organic kingdom. It is only when, independently of 

 those manifestations which constitute life, this substance 

 within a living being obeys physical and chemical laws 

 as it would obey them out of the body, (like calculous 

 concretions within animals, and crystals in the interior of 

 vegetable cells, and incrustations whether internal or ex- 

 ternal,) so that they issue from the medium within which 



