PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 45 



the character of wholes in the sphere occupied by them. A 

 mathematical point, line, or surface, is an ens rationis, for 

 it expresses an intellectual act; but a physical atom is 

 ens fictitium, which may be made subservient, as ciphers 

 are in arithmetic, to the purposes of hypothetical construc- 

 tion, per regulam falsi ; but transferred to Nature, it is in 

 the strictest sense an absurd quantity ; for extension, and 

 consequently divisibility, or multeity? (for space cannot be 

 divided,) is the indispensable condition, under which alone 

 anything can appear to us, or even be thought of, as a 

 thing. But if it should be replied, that the elementary 

 particles are atoms not positively, but by such a hardness 

 communicated to them as is relatively invincible, I should 

 remind the assertor that temeraria citatio supernaturalium 

 est pulvinar intellectus pigri, and that he who requires me 

 to believe a miracle of his own dreaming, must first work 

 a miracle to convince me that he had dreamt by inspira- 

 tion. Add, too, the gross inconsistency of resorting to an 

 immaterial influence in order to complete a system of 

 materialism, by the exclusion of all modes of existence 

 which the theorist cannot in imagination, at least, finger 

 and peep at ! Each of the preceding gradations, as above 

 defined, might be represented as they exist, and are realised 

 in Nature. But each would require a work for itself, 



1 Much against my will I repeat this scholastic term, multeity, but I have 

 sought in vain for an unequivocal word of a less repulsive character, that 

 would convey the notion in a positive and not comparative sense in kind, as 

 opposed to the unum et simplex, not in degree, as contracted with the few . 

 We can conceive no reason that can be adduced in justification of the word 

 caloric, as invented to distinguish the external cause of the sensation heat, 

 which would not equally authorise the introduction of a technical term in 

 this instance. 



