DR. HENRY MORE 161 



this notion was adopted by Addison and beautifully 

 commented on in one of his Spectators. 



How odd it seems that just this one of the innumer- 

 able problems in the organic world that ask for 

 solution should have been singled out for preferential 

 treatment! I think the once famous Dr. Henry 

 More of that age was more logical when he defined 

 the "Spirit of Nature" as "a substance incorporeal, 

 but without sense and animadversion, pervading the 

 whole matter of the universe, and exercising a plastical 

 power therein, according to the sundry predisposi- 

 tions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising 

 such phenomena in the world, by directing the parts 

 of matter and their motions, as cannot be resolved 

 into mere mechanical powers, which goes through 

 and assists all corporeal beings, and in the vicarious 

 person of God upon the universal matter of the world. 

 This suggests to the spider the fancy of spinning or 

 weaving her web, and to the bee of her forming of 

 her honeycomb, and especially to the silkworm of 

 conglomerating her both funeral and natal clue, and 

 to the birds of building their nests and of their so 

 diligently hatching their eggs." 



He did not mention migration, probably because 

 he always wrote in a hurry; he could not otherwise 

 have produced a whole cart-load of books. But I 

 have not quoted this passage just for fun, as a sample 

 of his queer, rock-me-to-sleep, free-verse prose, nor 

 as an example of the seventeenth-century mind, with 

 its metaphysical bias, its religiosity and fantastical- 

 ness, when it speculated on the problems of biology. 



