66 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



Having reasserted that I no more confound mag- 

 netism with electricity, or the chemical process, than the 

 mathematician confounds length with breadth, or either 

 with depth; I think it sufficient to add that there are 

 two views of the subject, the former of which I do not 

 believe attributable to any philosopher, while both are 

 alike disclaimed by me as forming any part of my views. 

 The first is that which is supposed to consider electricity 

 identical with life, as it subsists in organized bodies. The 

 other considers electricity as everywhere present, and 

 penetrating all bodies under the image of a subtile fluid 

 or substance, which, in Mr. Abernethy's inquiry, I 

 regard as little more than a mere diagram on his slate, 

 for the purpose of fixing the attention on the intellectual 

 conception, or as a possible product, (in which case elec- 

 tricity must be a composite power,) or at worst, as words 

 quce humana incuria fudit. This which, in inanimate 

 Nature, is manifested now as magnetism, now as electricity, 

 and now as chemical agency, is supposed, on entering an 

 organized body, to constitute its vital principle, something 

 in the same manner as the steam becomes the mechanic 

 power of the steam-engine, in consequence of its compres- 

 sion by the steam-engine ; or as the breeze that murmurs 

 indistinguishably in the forest becomes the element, the 

 substratum, of melody in the ^Eolian harp, and of consum- 

 mate harmony in the organ. Now this hypothesis is as 

 directly opposed to my view as supervention is to evolu- 

 tion, inasmuch as I hold the organized body itself, in all 

 its marvellous contexture, to be the PRODUCT and repre- 

 sentant of the power which is here supposed to have 

 supervened to it. So far from admitting a transfer, I 



