38 PROSERPINA. 



flowers to different insects; and it has recently 

 been proved by Mr. Darwin to be dependent on 

 insects for its existence. Doubly strange therefore, 

 it seems, that in some cases this race of plants 

 all but reaches the independent life of insects. It 

 rather settles upon boughs than roots itself in them ; 

 half of its roots may wave in the air. 



ii. What vital power is, men of science are not a 

 step nearer knowing than they were four thousand 

 years ago. They are, if anything, farther from 

 knowing now than then, in that they imagine them- 

 selves nearer. But they know more about its limita- 

 tions and manifestations than they did. They have 

 even arrived at something like a proof th'at there is 

 a fixed quantity of it flowing out of things and into 

 them. But, for the present, rest content with the 

 general and sure knowledge that, fixed or flowing, 

 measurable or immeasurable — one with electricity or 

 heat or light, or quite distinct from any of them — 

 life is a delightful, and its negative death, a dreadful 

 thing, to human creatures ; and that you can give 

 or gather a certain quantity of life into plants, 

 animals, and yourself by wisdom and courage, and 

 by their reverses can bring upon them any quantity 

 of death you please, which is a much more serious 

 point for you to consider than what life and death 

 are. 



