36 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. 



principle of its possibility, and from that principle to 

 evolve its being. Thus the mathematician demonstrates 

 the truths of geometry by constructing them. It is an 

 admirable remark of Joh. Bapt. a Vico, in a Tract pub- 

 lished at Naples, 1710, 1 "Geometrica ideo demonstramus, 

 quia facimus; physica si demoustrare possimus, faceremus. 

 Metaphysici veri claritas eadem ac lucis, quam non nisi 

 per opaca cognoscimus ; nam non lucem sed lucidas res 

 videmus. Physica sunt opaca, nempe formata et finita, in 

 quibus Metaphysici veri lumen videmus." The reasoner 

 who assigns structure or organization as the antecedent 

 of Life, who names the former a cause, and the latter its 

 effect, he it is who pretends to account for life. Now 

 Euclid would, with great right, demand of such a phi- 

 losopher to make Life; in the same sense, I mean, in which 

 Euclid makes an Icosaedron, or a figure of twenty sides, 

 namely, in the understanding or by an intellectual con- 

 struction. An argument which, of itself, is sufficient to 

 prove the untenable nature of Materialism. 



To explain a power, on the other hand, is (the power 

 itself being assumed, though not comprehended, ut qui 

 datur, non intelligitur) to unfold or spread it out : ex im- 

 plicito planum facere. In the present instance, such an 

 explanation would consist in the reduction of the idea of 

 Life to its simplest and most comprehensive form or mode 

 of action; that is, to some characteristic instinct or ten- 

 dency, evident in all its manifestations, and involved in 

 the idea itself. This assumed as existing in kind, it will 

 be required to present an ascending series of correspond- 



1 Joh. Bapt. a Vico, Neapol. Reg. eloq. Professor, de antiquissima Itallorum 

 sapientia ex lingua Latina originibus eruenda: libri tres. Neap., 1710. 



