PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 63 



tially vital the barrenness of the mechanic system, with 

 which alone his imagination has been familiarised, and 

 which, as hath been justly observed by a contemporary 

 writer, is contradistinguished from the former principally 

 in this respect; that demanding for every mode and act 

 of existence real or possible visibility, it knows only of 

 distance and nearness, composition (or rather compaction) 

 and decomposition, in short, the relations of unproductive 

 particles to each other ; so that in every instance the re- 

 sult is the exact sum of the component qualities, as in 

 arithmetical addition. This is the philosophy of Death, 

 and only of a dead nature can it hold good. In Life, 

 and in the view of a vital philosophy, the two component 

 counter-powers actually interpenetrate each other, and 

 generate a higher third, including both the former, " ita 

 tamen ut sit alia et major." 



As a complete answer to No. 3, I refer the reader to 

 many passages in the preceding and following pages, in 

 which, on far higher and more demonstrative grounds 

 than the mechanic system can furnish, I have exposed the 

 unmeaningness and absurdity of these finer fluids, as ap- 

 plied even to electricity itself; unless, indeed, they are 

 assumed as its product. But in addition I beg leave to 

 remind the author, that it is incomparably more agreeable 

 to all experience to originate the formative process in the 

 fluid, whether fine or gross, than in corporeal atoms, in 

 which we are not only deserted by all experience, but con- 

 tradicted by the primary conception of body itself. 



Equally inapplicable is No. 4 : and of No. 5 I can 

 only repeat, first, that I do not make Life like mag- 

 netism, or like electricity; that the difference between 



