388 V1BWS, &C. THE RHODIAN GENIUS. 



their dependence, and the nature of the component materials. 

 The blood of animals, which is variously modified in the 

 different classes, undergoes a change earlier than the juices of 

 plants. Fungi generally decompose more rapidly than the 

 leaves of trees ; and muscle more readily than the cutis. 



Bone, the elementary structure of which has only been 

 understood of late years, the hair of animals, the ligneous 

 part of vegetable substances, the shells or husks of fruit, 

 *nd the feathery calix (pappus) of plants, are not inorganic 

 and devoid of life; but approximate, even in life, to the 

 condition which they manifest after their separation from 

 the rest of the organism. The higher the degree of vitality 

 or irritability of an animate substance, the more striking 

 or rapid will be the change in its compound state after 

 separation. "The aggregate of the cells is an organism, and 

 the organism lives as long as its parts continue actively sub- 

 servient to the whole. Considered antithetically to inanimate 

 nature, the organism appears to be self-determining."* The 

 difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of 

 organism to physical and chemical laws, depends chiefly (and 

 almost in the same manner as the prediction of meteorological 

 processes in the atmosphere) on the complication of the 

 phenomena, and on the great number of the simultaneously 

 acting forces, as well as the conditions of their activity. 



I have faithfully adhered in the Cosmos to the same mode 

 of representing and considering the so-called vital forces, 

 and affinities,! the formative impulse and the principle of 

 organising activity. I there wrote as follows :J "The mythical 

 ideas long entertained of the imponderable substances, and 

 vital forces, peculiar to each mode of organization, have com- 

 plicated our views generally, and shed an uncertain light on 

 the path we ought to pursue. 



" The most various forms of intuition have thus, age after 

 age, aided in augmenting the prodigious mass of empirical 

 knowledge, which in our own day has been enlarged with 

 ever-increasing rapidity. The investigating spirit of man 



* Henle, Allgemeine Anatomic, 1841, pp. 216219. 

 f Pulteney Alison, in the Transact, of the Royal Soc. oj Edinburgh, 

 iol. xvi. p. 305. 

 t Cosmos, vol. i. p. 58. (Bonn's Edition.) 



