70 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



like manner produced through the perpetual modification 

 of the first by the opposite forces of the second ; that is, 

 by the principle of contraction and difference at the eastern 

 extreme the element of fire, or the oxygen of the che- 

 mists; and by the elementary power of dilatation, or 

 universality at its western extreme the vSwp ev vSan of 

 the ancients, and the hydrogen of the laboratory. 



It has been before noticed that the progress of Nature 

 is more truly represented by the ladder, than by the sus- 

 pended chain, and that she expands as by concentric circles. 

 This is, indeed, involved in the very conception of indi- 

 viduation, whether it be applied to the different species or 

 to the individuals. In what manner the evident inter- 

 space is reconciled with the equally evident continuity of 

 the life of Nature, is a problem that can be solved by those 

 minds alone, which have intuitively learnt that the whole 

 actualize of Nature origmates'inthe existence, and consists 

 in the perpetual reconciliation, and as perpetual resurgency 

 of the primary contradiction, of which universal polarity is 

 the result and the exponent. From the first moment of 

 the differential impulse (the primaeval chemical epoch of 

 the Wernerian school) when Nature, by the tranquil 

 deposition of crystals, prepared, as it were, the fulcrum 

 of her after-efforts, from this, her first, and in part irre- 

 vocable, self-contraction, we find, in each ensuing produc- 

 tion, more and more tendency to independent existence 

 in the increasing multitude of strata, and in the relics of 

 the lowest orders, first of vegetable and then of animal 

 life. In the schistous formations, which we must here 

 assume as in great measure the residua of vegetable crea- 

 tions, that have sunk back into the universal life, and in 



