PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 43 



these physical properties/' 1 would demonstrate that, in the 

 truth of things, they are homogeneous, and that both the 

 classes are but degrees and different dignities of one and 

 the same tendency. For the latter are not subjected to 

 the former as a lever, or walking-stick to the muscles; 

 the more intense the life is, the less does elasticity, for 

 instance, appear as elasticity. It sinks down into the 

 nearest approach to its physical form by a series of degrees 

 from the contraction and elongation of the irritable muscle 

 to the physical hardness of the insensitive nail. The 

 lower powers are assimilated, not merely employed, and 

 assimilation presupposes the homogeneous nature of the 

 thing assimilated \ else it is a miracle, only not the same 

 as that of a creation, because it would imply that addi- 

 tional and equal miracle of annihilation. In short, all 

 the impossibilities which the acutest of the reformed 

 Divines have detected in the hypothesis of transubstan- 

 tiation would apply, totidem verbis et syllabis, to that of 

 assimilation, if the objects and the agents were really 

 heterogeneous. Unless, therefore, a thing can exhibit 

 properties which do not belong to it, the very admission 

 that living matter exhibits physical properties, includes 

 the further admission, that those physical or dead pro- 

 perties are themselves vital in essence, really distinct but 



1 " The matter that surrounds us is divided into two great classes, living 

 and dead ; the latter is governed by physical laws, such as attraction, gravi- 

 tation, chemical affinity ; and it exhibits physical properties, such as cohesion, 

 elasticity, divisibility, &c. Living matter also exhibits these properties, and 

 is subject, in great measure, to physical laws. But living bodies are endowed 

 moreover with a set of properties altogether different from these, and con- 

 trasting with them very remarkably." (Vide Lawrence's Lectures, p. 121.) 



