PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



units, is the circle in the first dignity j to the sphere in 

 the second; and to the globe in the third. In short, 

 neither can the antagonists appear but as two forces of 

 oue power, nor can the power be conceived by us but as 

 the equatorial point of the two counteracting forces ; of 

 which the hypomochlion of the lever is as good an illus- 

 tration as anything can be that is thought of mechanically 

 only, and exclusively of life. To make it adequate, we 

 must substitute the idea of positive production for that of 

 rest, or mere neutralization. To the fancy alone it is the 

 null- point, or zero, but to the reason it is the punctum 

 saliens, and the power itself in its eminence. Even in 

 these, the most abstract and universal forms of all thought 

 and perception even in the ideas of time and space, we 

 slip under them, as it were, a substratum ; for we cannot 

 think of them but as far as they are co -inherent, and 

 therefore as reciprocally the measures of each other. 

 Nor, again, can we finish the process without having the^- 

 idea of motion as its immediate product. Thus we say, 

 that time has one dimension, and imagine it to ourselves 

 as a line. But the line we have already proved to be the 

 productive synthesis of time, with space under the pre- 

 dominance of time. If we exclude space by an abstract 

 assumption, the time remains as a spaceless point, and 

 represents the concentered power of unity and active 

 negation, i. e. retraction, determination, and limit, ab 

 intra. But if we assume the time as excluded, the line 

 vanishes, and we leave space dimensionless, an indistin- 

 guishable ALL, and therefore the representative of abso- 

 lute weakness and formlessness, but, for that very reason, 

 of infinite capacity and formability. 



