48 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



strict sense of the word, even as their description and 

 diagnostics constitute its preliminaries. 



Their claim to this rank I cannot here even attempt 

 to support. It will be sufficient to explain my reason 

 for having assigned it to them, by the avowal, that I regard 

 them in a twofold point of view : 1st, as the residue and 

 product of vegetable and animal life ; 2d, as manifesting 

 the tendencies of the Life of Nature to vegetation or 

 animalization. And this process I believe in one instance 

 by the peat morasses of the northern, and in the other 

 instance by the coral banks of the southern hemisphere 

 to be still connected with the present order of vegetable 

 and animal Life, which constitute the fourth and last step 

 in these wide and comprehensive divisions. 



In the lowest forms of the vegetable and animal world 

 we perceive totality dawning into indwiduatwn, while in 

 man, as the highest of the class, the individuality is not 

 only perfected in its* corporeal sense, but begins a new 

 series beyond the appropriate limits of physiology. The 

 tendency to individuation, more or less obscure, more or 

 less obvious, constitutes the common character of all 

 classes, as far as they maintain for themselves a dis- 

 tinction from the universal life of the planet ; while the 

 degrees, both of intensity and extension, to which this 

 tendency is realized, form the species, and their ranks 

 in the great scale of ascent and expansion. 



In the treatment of a subject so vast and complex, 

 within the limits prescribed for an essay like the present, 

 where it is impossible not to say either too much or too little 

 (and too much because too little), an author is entitled to 

 make large claims on the candour of his judges. Many 



