WITH RELATION TO VITALITY. 47 



governing by the same laws, every particle of 

 this matter which it has assimilated ; and con- 

 stituting the power whence the organisation 

 originates the fountain, whence health and 

 disease are made to flow.* 



* May we not be permitted to suppose, that the whole 

 visible world exhibits nothing more than so many passing 

 pictures, of which these principles are the prototypes, or exem- 

 plars; and, that it is through the participation of them 

 which matter has acquired, that it may be said to have ob- 

 tained a semblance of immortality. May we not be allowed 

 to credit those speculative men, who, in times of old, have 

 told us, that it is in these comprehensive and permanent 

 principles, (or forms, as they have been called,) that the 

 Deity views at once, without looking abroad, all possible 

 productions, both present, past, and future ; that this great 

 and stupendous view is but a view of himself, where all 

 things lie enveloped in their principles, or exemplars, as be- 

 ing essential to the fulness of his universal intellection. If 

 such be the case, the axiom so applicable to the materialist, 

 Nil est in intellects, quod nonpriusfuit in sensu, that there 

 subsists nothing in intellect which did not before subsist in 

 sense, must be reversed, and we ought rather to say, Nil 

 est in sensu, quod non prius fuit in intellectu, that nothing 

 exists in sense, which did not pre-exist in intellect. 



