42 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



be that of the internal copula of bodies, or (if we may 

 venture to borrow a phrase from the Platonic school) the 

 power which discloses itself from within as a principle of 

 unity in the many. But that there is a physiognomy in 

 words, which, without reference to their fitness or neces- 

 sity, make unfavorable as well as favorable impressions, 

 and that every unusual term in an abstruse research 

 incurs the risk of being denominated jargon, I should at 

 the same time have borrowed a scholastic term, and denned 

 life absolutely , as the principle of unity in multeity, as far 

 as the former, the unity to wit, is produced ab intra; but 

 eminently (sensu eminenti), I define life as the principle 

 of individuation, or the power which unites a given all 

 into a whole that is presupposed by all its parts. The 

 link that combines the two, and acts throughout both, 

 will, of course, be defined by the tendency to individuation. 

 Thus, from its utmost latency, in which life is one with 

 the elementary powers of mechanism, that is, with the 

 powers of mechanism considered as qualitative and actu- 

 ally synthetic, to its highest manifestation, (in which, as 

 the vis vita vivida, or life as life, it subordinates and 

 modifies these powers, becoming contra-distinguished from 

 mechanism, 1 ab extra, under the form of organization,) 

 there is an ascending series of intermediate classes, and of 

 analogous gradations in each class. To a reflecting mind, 

 indeed, the very fact that the powers peculiar to life in 

 living animals include cohesion, elasticity, &c. (or, in the 

 words of a late publication, " that living matter exhibits 



1 Thus we may say that whatever is organized from without, is a product 

 of mechanism ; whatever is mechanised from within, is a production of or- 

 ganization. 



