1 20 Traces of Unity in 



prejudicial to the progress of knowledge by stopping 

 enquiry by a mere word! Moreover, the very assump- 

 tion upon which the doctrine in question is based that 

 vital motion is altogether distinct from physical motion 

 is itself not altogether satisfactory. ' At the best,' 

 as Coleridge says,* ' it can only be regarded as a hasty 

 deduction from the first superficial notions of the objects 

 that surround us, sufficient, perhaps, for the purpose of 

 ordinary discrimination, but far too indeterminate and 

 diffluent to be taken unexamined by the philosophic 

 enquirer. * * * * By a comprisal of the petitio 

 principii with the argumentum in circulo in plain 

 English, by an easy logic which begins by begging the 

 question, and then, moving in a circle, comes round to 

 the point where it begins each of the two divisions has 

 been made to define the other by a mere re-assertion of 

 their assumed contrariety. The physiologist has lumi- 

 nously explained y + x by informing us that it was a 

 somewhat that is the antithesis of y x, and if we ask 

 what then is y x, the answer is, the antithesis of 

 y + x ; a reciprocation that may remind us of the 

 twin sisters in the fable of the Lamiae, with one eye 

 between them both, which each borrowed from the other 

 as either happened to want it, but with this additional 

 disadvantage, that in the present case it is, after all, but 

 an eye of glass.' 



At the time of Paracelsus the facts of chemistry 

 began to occupy a large share of the attention of 

 philosophers, and soon afterwards a school, called the 

 iatro -chemical school, propounded various physiological 

 doctrines founded upon chemistry. The opposition of 



" Hints towards the Formation of a more Comprehensive Theory of 

 Life." By S. T Coleridge. Ed. by Dr. Seth B. Watson. Churchill, 

 1848. 



