12 PREFACE. 



discloses itself from within, combining many qualities 

 into one individual thing. This individualising prin- 

 ciple unites, as he conceives, with the cooperating 

 action of magnetism, electricity, and chemistry. At 

 least, such is the inference to be drawn from the present 

 state of science ; though it is easily conceivable that 

 future discoveries may bring us acquainted with powers 

 more directly connected with Life. The most general 

 law governing the action of Life, as a tendency to in- 

 dividuation, is here designated polarity; for instance, 

 the power termed magnetism (not meaning that there 

 is necessarily an actual tangible magnet in the case) 

 has two poles, the negative, answering to attraction, 

 rest, carbon, &c., and the positive, answering to re- 

 pulsion, mobility, azote, &c. ; and as the magnetic 

 needle which points to the north necessarily indicates 

 thereby the south, so the power disposing to rest has 

 necessarily a counteracting influence disposing to 

 mobility, between which lies the point of indifference. 

 Now this quality, to which Mr. Coleridge gives the 

 name of polarity, is in truth nothing more than an ex- 

 emplification of the doctrine of opposites, the Trpo'c 



ttAArjXa a'vrifca/i>wi> avriQtaiq, which the EleatlC Phi- 



losopher, in Plato's ' Sophist,' applies to the idea of 

 existence and non-existence, and which accompanies 

 every other idea as its shadow, whether in physics, 

 in intellect, or in morals; for the finite is opposed 

 to the infinite, the false to the true, the evil to the 



