ORGANIC MECHANISM. 61 



mechanisms which are presented to our view 

 in living bodies. However successful may be 

 human artists in their attempts to contrive au- 

 tomata, which shall exactly imitate different 

 animal movements, there will always be wanting 

 that internal principle of action, derived from a 

 higher source than mechanism can supply, and 

 without which these highly wrought works of 

 man, like the un vivified statues of Prometheus, 

 must remain for ever mere masses of insentient 

 and inert materials. 



As the living functions imply the mechanical 

 action and re-action of parts which cohere in 

 some definite order of arrangement, so as to 

 preserve that determinate form to which they 

 constantly tend to return on being displaced, 

 it is impossible to conceive that a mere fluid 

 can exercise these functions ; because the par- 

 ticles of a fluid, being equally moveable in 

 every direction, have no determinate relative 

 situations, and possess no character of perma- 

 nence. All organic and living structures, there- 

 fore, must be composed of solid as well as fluid 

 parts ; although the proportion between these is, 

 in different cases, almost infinitely varied. A 

 dormant vitality may, indeed, exist in a system 

 of organs which have been brought into a per- 

 fectly dry state : as is proved by the examples 

 of vegetable seeds, and also of many species of 

 animalcules, and even of some of the more 



