Organic and Inorganic Forms. 8 7 



present question, however, is, not this, but. whether the 

 traces of unity which have been met with everywhere in 

 organic nature are carried on into inorganic nature : and 

 this question, as it seems to me, may be answered 

 affirmatively without going further. Indeed, it were 

 scarcely necessary to have gone so far, for this answer 

 would seem to be implied in the simple fact that the 

 matter of which the things of life are made is being con- 

 tinually taken from and restored to the inorganic world, 

 the things of life, like waves in the ocean, rising and 

 falling in the substance of the outer world rather than in 

 any substance which is specially their own. 



And, thus, instead of being an idle story, the 



metamorphoses of Proteus may be nothing less than a 

 revelation in poetical guise of the grand truth that there 

 is every where in nature one and the same archetypal 

 plan. 



