68 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



vast homogeneous drop ! In this sense it may be even 

 justified, as an appropriate symbol of the great funda- 

 mental truth that all things spring from, and subsist in, 

 the endless strife between indifference and difference. The 

 whole history of Nature is comprised in the specification 

 of the transitional states from the one to the other. The 

 symbol only is fictitious : the thing signified is not only 

 grounded in truth it is the law and actuating principle 

 of all other truths, whether physical or intellectual. 



Now, by magnetism in its widest sense, I mean the 

 first and simplest differential act of Nature, as the power 

 which works in length, and produces the first distinction 

 between the indistinguishable by the generation of a line. 

 Relatively, therefore, to fluidity, that is, to matter, the 

 parts of which cannot be distinguished from each other by 

 figure, magnetism is the power of fixity ; but, relatively to 

 itself, magnetism, like every other power in Nature, is 

 designated by its opposite poles, and must be represented 

 as the magnetic axis, the northern pole of which signifies 

 rest, attraction, fixity, coherence, or hardness ; the element 

 of EARTH in the nomenclature of observation and the CAR- 

 BONIC principle in that of experiment; while the southern 

 pole, as its antithesis, represents mobility, repulsion, 

 incoherence, and fusibility ; the element of air in the 

 nomenclature of observation (that is, of Nature as it 

 appears to us when unquestioned by art), and azote or 

 nitrogen in the nomenclature of experiment (that is, of 

 Nature in the state so beautifully allegorized in the 

 Homeric fable of Proteus bound down, and forced to 

 answer by Ulysses, after having been pursued through all 



