50 PHYSIOLOGY OP LIFE. 



individuate cannot be conceived without the opposite 

 tendency to connect, even as the centrifugal power supposes 

 the centripetal, or as the two opposite poles constitute 

 each other, and are the constituent acts of one and the 

 same power in the magnet. We might say that the life 

 of the magnet subsists in their union, but that it lives 

 (acts or manifests itself) in their strife. Again, if the 

 tendency be at once to individuate and to connect, to 

 detach, but so as either to retain or to reproduce attach- 

 ment, the individuation itself must be a tendency to the 

 ultimate production of the highest and most comprehensive 

 individuality. This must be the one great end of Nature, 

 her ultimate object, or by whatever other word we may 

 designate that something which bears to a final cause the 

 same relation that Nature herself bears to the Supreme 

 Intelligence. 



According to the plan I have prescribed for this in- 

 quisition, we are now to seek for the highest law, or most 

 general form, under which this tendency acts, and then 

 to pursue the same process with this, as we have already 

 done with the tendency itself, namely, having stated the 

 law in its highest abstraction, to present it in the different 

 forms in which it appears and reappears in higher an 

 higher dignities. I restate the question. The tendenc 

 having been ascertained, what is its most general law 

 I answer polarity, or the essential dualism of Nature 

 arising out of its productive unity, and still tending to re 

 affirm it, either as equilibrium, indifference, or identity 

 In its productive power, of which the product is the onl 

 measure, consists its incompatibility with mathematica 



