PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 91 



If the time and the limit prescribed would admit, we could 

 multiply experiments, all tending to prove the same law ; 

 but we must be content with the barely sufficient. But 

 that the chemical process acts in depth, and first, therefore, 

 realizes and integrates the fluxional power of magnetism 

 and electricity, is involved in the term composition ; and 

 this will become still more convincing when we have learnt 

 to regard decomposition as a mere co-relative, i. e. as de- 

 composition relatively to the body decomposed, but com- 

 position actually and in respect of the substances, into 

 which it was decomposed. The alteration in the specific 

 gravity of metals in their chemical amalgams, interesting 

 as the fact is in all points, is decisive in the present ; for 

 gravity is the sole inward of inorganic bodies it consti- 

 tutes their depth. 



I can now, for the first time, give to my opinions 

 that degree of intelligibility, which is requisite for their 

 introduction as hypotheses ; the experiments above related, 

 understood as in the common mode of thinking, prove 

 that the magnetic influence flows in length, the electric 

 fluid by suffusion, and that chemical agency (whatever 

 the main agent may be) is qualitative and in intimis. 

 Now my hypothesis demands the converse of all this. 

 I affirm that a power, acting exclusively in length, is 

 (wherever it be found) magnetism ; that a power which 

 acts both in length and in breadth, and only in length and 

 breadth, is (wherever it be found) electricity; and finally, 

 that a power which, together with length and breadth, 

 includes depth likewise, is (wherever it be found) con- 

 structive agency. That is but one phenomenon of mag- 

 netism, to which we have appropriated and confined the 



