PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 67 



do not admit it even in electricity itself, or in the pheno- 

 mena universally called electrical; among other points I 

 ground my explanation of remote sympathy on the directly 

 contrary supposition. 



But my opinions will be best explained by a rapid 

 exemplification in the processes of Nature, from the first 

 rudiments of individualized life in the lowest classes of its 

 two great poles, the vegetable and animal creation, to its 

 crown and consummation in the human body ; thus illus- 

 trating at once the unceasing polarity of life, as the form 

 of its process, and its tendency to progressive individuation 

 as the law of its direction. 



Among the conceptions, of the mere ideal character of 

 which the philosopher is well aware, and which yet become 

 necessary from the necessity of assuming a beginning; 

 the original fluidity of the planet is the chief. Under 

 some form or other it is expressed or implied in every 

 system of cosmogony and even of geology, from Moses to 

 Thales, and from Thales to Werner. This assumption 

 originates in the same law of mind that gave rise to the 

 prima materia of the Peripatetic school. In order to 

 comprehend and explain the forms of things, we must 

 imagine a state antecedent to form. A chaos of hetero- 

 geneous substances, such as our Milton has described, is 

 not only an impossible state (for this may be equally true 

 of every other attempt), but it is palpably impossible. It 

 presupposes, moreover, the thing it is intended to solve ; 

 and makes that an effect which had been called in as the 

 explanatory cause. The requisite and only serviceable 

 fiction, therefore, is the representation of CHAOS as one 



