44 PROPERTIES OF MATTER 



It is the DEITY OMNIPOTENT, by whose 

 infinite power, the universe, in general, is go- 

 verned and directed ; who is the first cause, and 

 the first mover ; so it is the power of life 

 which constitutes the first cause, and the first 

 mover of every living system, in particular, 

 by which it is modelled and formed. Al- 

 though this living power is hidden from the 

 sight of the eye, we may, perhaps, gain a 

 glimpse of its nature by abstraction, or by the 

 analogy which subsists between its fabricating 

 power, and the operation of the mind, when it 

 employs the organs of the body as its instru- 

 ments. When an architect contemplates the 

 model of a palace, which he intends to erect, 

 and puts the design on paper, the form of 

 that palace had a prior existence in his mind ; 

 and the design on the paper, is nothing else 

 than the image, or the conception, which pre- 

 viously existed in the mind of the artist ; the 

 one is prior, the other posterior, the former is 

 cause, the other, effect. 



In like manner, when a man commits his 

 thoughts to writing, the letters described on 

 the paper, are nothing more than the pictures, 

 or representations of those which previously 

 existed in the mind; but, as every cause is 

 better than its effects, mental conceptions must, 

 necessarily, transcend corporeal operations. In 

 like manner, life itself, the cause of organisa- 



