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SECTION VIII. 

 Observation of organized Beings. 



IN the former sections, an attempt has been made 

 to call the attention of the reader to the objects 

 and phenomena of the creation around him, in 

 their general appearances and properties as mat- 

 ter, and without any reference to the particular 

 forms of individual subjects. 



Light is nearly the same wherever it may fall, 

 or from whatever it may be produced; and though 

 the light which comes to us from one substance, 

 is often very different, in colour and intensity, 

 from that which comes from another, the portion 

 that does come to our eyes, is still a part of the 

 same specific light, which is entire and undecom- 

 posed in the beams of the sun. When the fields 

 send us back the green, and, as we suppose, drink 

 up the red, that red wholly disappears in the 

 leaves and the grass ; and, in like manner, when 

 any other colour is given out to us, the remain- 

 der is absorbed, and we cannot, by any scrutiny 

 in which we can engage, find out what becomes 

 of the portion which is retained by any substance, 

 or how it affects the other properties of that sub- 

 stance. 



As we can, by means of the prism, decompose 

 the sunbeams into all the tints that are necessary 

 or even possible in the colouring of nature, we 

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