PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 49 



things he must express inaccurately, not from ignorance 

 or oversight, but because the more precise expression 

 would have involved the necessity of a further explanation, 

 and this another, even to the first elements of the science. 

 This is an inconvenience which presses on the analytic 

 method, on however large a scale it may be conducted, 

 compared with the synthetic ; and it must bear with a 

 tenfold weight in the present instance, where we are not 

 permitted to avail ourselves of its usual advantages as a 

 counterbalance to its inherent defects. I shall have 

 done all that I dared propose to myself, or that can 

 be justly demanded of me by others, if I have succeeded 

 in conveying a sufficiently clear, though indistinct and 

 inadequate notion, so as of its many results to render in- 

 telligible that one which T am to apply to my particular 

 subject, not as a truth already demonstrated, but as an 

 hypothesis, which pretends to no higher merit than that of 

 explaining the particular class of phenomena to which it 

 is applied, and asks no other reward than a presumption 

 in favour of the general system of which it affirms itself to 

 be a dependent though integral part. By Life I every- 

 where mean the true Idea of Life, or that most general 

 form under which Life manifests itself to us, which in- 

 cludes all its other forms. This I have stated to be the 

 tendency to individuation, and the degrees or intensities 

 I of Life to consist in the progressive realization of this 

 tendency. The power which is acknowledged- to exist, 

 wherever the realization is found, must subsist wherever 

 the tendency is manifested. The power which comes 

 forth and stirs abroad in the bird, must be latent in the 

 egg. I have shown, moreover, that this tendency to 



