THE MECHANISM ONLY OF LIFE 



the faculties shown by others higher in the scale of 

 life ; yet these living creatures are almost, if riot ut- 

 terly, devoid of organs, structure, or any form ; no 

 one portion differs from another; all parts are brain , 

 all stomach, all limb ; all parts are sensitive and seek 

 or avoid the light. If broken up or divided each 

 fragment lives on a life of its own. They are simply 

 formless, shapeless, gelatinous masses, but capable of 

 self-movement, of seeking their food and converting 

 it into their own substance. They have sensation, 

 volition and perception. Like the germinal chloro- 

 phyll-holding cells of the Vaucheria Clavata, they 

 are not merely-lumps of plasmodium with the potency 

 of life ; they are living creatures, having received life 

 from parent organisms, and in turn begetting others 

 with the like or higher capacities than their own. 



In observing the varied phenomena that nature 

 offers in the many protean changes of energy from 

 one form to that of another, such as the production of 

 light, of heat, of galvanic or electric currents, there 

 is a constant tendency to confound the mechanism, 

 contrivance, or means, by which, or through which, 

 the change occurs, with the ultimate cause itself; 

 to lose sight of the pre-existing energy as the motive 

 force, and thus to substitute conditions for causes. 

 In the days of exclusive, a-priori, reasoning this was 

 natural enough ; indeed, was inevitable. The ring- 



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