28 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 



time being. For it is not true only of the great divisions 

 or classes into which we have found it expedient to dis- 

 tinguish, while we generalize, the powers acting in nature, 

 as into intellectual, vital, chemical, mechanical ; but it 

 holds equally true of the degrees, or species of each of 

 these genera relatively to each other : as in the decom- 

 position of the alkalies by heat, or the galvanic spark. 

 Like the combining power of Life, the copula here resists 

 for awhile the attempts to dissolve it, and then yields, to 

 reappear in new phenomena. 



It is a wonderful property of the human mind, that 

 when once a momentum has been given to it in a fresh 

 direction, it pursues the new path with obstinate perse- 

 verance, in all conceivable bearings, to its utmost extremes. 

 And by the startling consequences which arise out of these 

 extremes, it is first awakened to its error, and either re- 

 called to some former track, or receives some fresh impulse, 

 which it follows with the same eagerness, and admits to 

 the same monopoly. Thus in the 13th century the first 

 science which roused the intellects of men from the torpor 

 of barbarism, was, as in all countries ever has been, and 

 ever must be the case, the science of Metaphysics am 

 Ontology. We first seek what can be found at home, am 

 what wonder if truths, that appeared to reveal the secret 

 depths of our own souls, should take possession of the whole 

 mind, and all truths appear trivial which could not either 

 be evolved out of similar principles, by the same process 

 or at least brought under the same forms of thought, by 

 perceived or imagined analogies ? And so it was. For 

 more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle 

 of their own spirits, not only concerning its own forms 



