PREFACE. 9 



other tongues, were first employed to denote human 

 life, that is, the duration of a human being's existence 

 from birth to the grave. As this existence was marked 

 by actions, many of which were common to man with 

 other animals, those animals also were said to "live ;" 

 but the extension of the notion of Life to the vege- 

 table creation is comparatively a recent usage, and 

 hitherto (in this country at least) no writer before Mr. 

 Coleridge, so far as I know, has maintained that rocks 

 and mountains, nay, "the great globe itself," share with 

 mankind the gift of Life. On the other hand, there 

 are well known and energetic uses of the word "Life," 

 to which Mr. Coleridge's speculations, as contained in 

 the accompanying pages, are wholly inapplicable. Al- 

 most all nations, even the most savage, agree in the 

 belief that individuals of the human race, after they 

 have ceased to exist in this mortal life, will exist in 

 another state, to which also the word Life is uni- 

 versally applied; but to this latter Mr. Coleridge's 

 views of magnetism, electricity, &c., can hardly be 

 thought applicable. Still less can they apply to "Life" 

 in its spiritual sense ; as, when Moses says to the Jews, 

 " the words of the law are your life," (Deut. xxxii, 47,) 

 and when our Saviour says, "the words that I speak 

 unto you, they are spirit, and they are life;' (John, vi, 

 63;) and again, "I am the resurrection and the life" 

 (John, xi, 25.) Upon the whole, therefore, I think it 

 would have been advisable in Mr. Coleridge to have 

 adopted a different phraseology, in tracing the opera- 



