32 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 



the infinite variety of chemical phenomena to the actions, 

 reactions, and interchanges of a few elementary substances, 

 or at least excited the expectation that this would speedily 

 be effected, the hope shot up, almost instantly, into full 

 faith, that it had been effected. Henceforward the new 

 path, thus brilliantly opened, became the common road 

 to all departments of knowledge : and, to this moment, it 

 has been pursued with an eagerness and almost epidemic 

 enthusiasm which, scarcely less than its political revolu- 

 tions, characterise the spirit of the age. Many and in- 

 auspicious have been the invasions and inroads of this new 

 conqueror into the rightful territories of other sciences ; 

 and strange alterations have been made in less harmless 

 points than those of terminology, in homage to an art 

 unsettled, in the very ferment of imperfect discoveries, and 

 either without a theory, or with a theory maintained only 

 by composition and compromise. Yet this very circum- 

 stance has favoured its encroachments, by the gratifications 

 which its novelty affords to our curiosity, and by the 

 keener interest and higher excitement which an unsettled 

 and revolutionary state is sure to inspire. He who sup- 

 poses that science possesses an immunity from such influ- 

 ences knows little of human nature. How, otherwise, 

 could men of strong minds and sound judgments have 

 attempted to penetrate by the clue of chemical experi- 

 ment the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic life, 

 without being aware that chemistry must needs be at its 

 extreme limits, when it has approached the threshold of 

 a higher power? Its own transgressions, however, and 

 the failure of its enterprises will become the means of 

 defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard 



