38 LIFE AND DEATH. 



explanation of all phenomenality. Physical properties, 

 vital phenomena, psychical facts, all have their founda- 

 tion in this immanent activity. Material activity is 

 a minimum of soul or thought which, by continuous 

 gradation and progressive complexity, without solution 

 of continuity, without an abrupt transition from the 

 homogeneous to the heterogeneous, rises through the 

 series of living beings to the dignity of the human 

 soul. The observation ot the transitions, an imperfect 

 tracing of the geometrical method of limits, thus 

 enables us to pass from material to vital, and from 

 thence to psychical activity. 



Apparent Heterogeneity is the Result of the Arrange- 

 ment or the Combination of Homogeneous Bodies. In 

 this system, material energy, life, soul would only be 

 more and more complex combinations of the con- 

 substantial activity with material atoms. Life appears 

 distinct from physical force, and thought from life, 

 because the analysis has not yet advanced far enough. 

 Thus, glass would appear to the ancient Chaldeans 

 distinct from the sand and salt of which they made it. 

 In the same way, again, water, to modern eyes, is 

 distinct from its constituents, oxygen and hydrogen. 

 The whole difficulty is that of explaining what this 

 "arrangement" of the elements can introduce that 

 is new in the aspect of the compound. We must 

 know what novelty and apparent homogeneity the 

 variety of the combinations, which are only special 

 arrangements of the elementary parts, may produce in 

 the phenomena. But we do not know, and it is this 

 ignorance which leads us to consider them as hetero- 

 geneous, irreducible, and distinct in principle. The 

 vital phenomenon, the complexus of physico-chemical 

 facts, thus appears* to us essentially different from 



