172 EXPLANATIONS. 



" Some persons," says one of my reviewers, 

 " have a vague idea, that there is something dero- 

 gatory to the lowest form of animal life to have 

 its origin in merely inorganic elements ; an idea 

 which results, perhaps, not so much from any 

 subtle and elevated conceptions of life, as from an 

 imagination unawakened to the dignity and the 

 marvel of the inorganic world. What is motion 

 but a sort of life ? a life of activity, if not of feel- 

 ing. Suppose — what, indeed, nowhere exists— an 

 inert matter, and let it be suddenly endowed with 

 motion, so that two particles should fly towards 

 each other from the utmost bounds of the universe ; 

 were not this almost as strange a property as that 

 which endows an irritable tissue, or an organ of 

 secretion ? Is not the world one — the creature of 

 one God — dividing itself, with constant interchange 

 of parts, into the sentient and the non-sentient, 

 in order, so to speak, to become conscious of 

 itself? Are we to place a great chasm between 

 the sentient and the non- sentient, so that it 

 shall be derogation to a poor worm to have 

 no higher genealogj'^ than the element which 

 is the lightning of heaven, and too much honour to 

 the subtle chemistry of the earth, to be the father 

 of a crawling subject, of some bag, or sack, or im- 

 perceptible globule of animal life. No j we have 



