PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 85 



the intenseness and extension of individuality, is so unde- 

 niable, that we may leap forward at once to the highest 

 realization and reconciliation of both her tendencies, that 

 of the most perfect detachment with the greatest possible 

 union, to that last work, in which Nature did not assist 

 as handmaid under the eye of her sovereign Master, who 

 made Man in his own image, by superadding self-con- 

 sciousness with self-government, and breathed into him 

 a living soul. 



The class of Vermes deposit a calcareous stuff, as if it had 

 torn loose from the earth a piece of the gross mass which it 

 must still drag about with it. In the insect class this 

 residuum has refined itself. In the fishes and amphibia it 

 is driven back or inward, the organic power begins to be 

 intuitive, and sensibility appears. In the birds the bones 

 have become hollow; while, with apparent proportional 

 recess, but, in truth, by the excitement of the opposite 

 pole, their exterior presents an actual vegetation. The 

 bones of the mammalia are filled up, and their coverings 

 have become more simple. Man possesses the most per- 

 fect osseous structure, the least and most insignificant 

 covering. The whole force of organic power has attained 

 an inward and centripetal direction. He has the whole 

 world in counterpoint to him, but he contains an entire 

 world within himself. Now, for the first time at the apex 

 of the living pyramid, it is Man and Nature, but Man 

 himself is a syllepsis, a compendium of Nature the 

 Microcosm ! Naked and helpless cometh man into the 

 world. Such has been the complaint from eldest time ; 

 but we complain of our chief privilege, our ornament, and 

 the connate mark of our sovereignty. Porphyrigeniti 



