DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 31 



corpuscular system and mechanical theory. It became 

 synonymous with philosophy itself. It was the sole portal 

 at which truth was permitted to enter. The human body 

 was treated of as an hydraulic machine, the operations of 

 medicine were solved, and alas ! even directed by reference 

 partly to gravitation and the laws of motion, and partly 

 by chemistry, which itself, however, as far as its theory 

 was concerned, was but a branch of mechanics working 

 exclusively by imaginary wedges, angles, and spheres. 

 Should the reader chance to put his hand on the 'Prin- 

 ciples of Philosophy/ by La Forge, an immediate disciple 

 of Descartes, he may see the phenomena of sleep solved 

 in a copper-plate engraving, with all the figures into 

 which the globules of the blood shaped themselves, and 

 the results demonstrated by mathematical calculations. 

 In short, from the time of Kepler 1 to that of Newton, and 

 from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external 

 nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, 

 and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured 

 within the magic circle of mathematical formulae. And 

 now a new light was struck by the discovery of electricity, 

 and, in every sense of the word, both playful and serious, 

 both for good and for evil, it may be affirmed to have 

 electrified the whole frame of natural philosophy. Close 

 on its heels followed the momentous discovery of the 

 principal gases by Scheele and Priestly, the composition of 

 water by Cavendish, and the doctrine of latent heat by 

 Black. The scientific world was prepared for a new 

 dynasty; accordingly, as soon as Lavoisier had reduced 



1 Whose own mind, however, was not comprehended in the vortex ; where 

 Kepler erred it was in the other extreme. 



