178 NATURE AND LIFE. 



such a hope. Not only is electricity far from being the whole' 

 of life, but it cannot even be regarded as one of the elements 

 of life, or be compared, for instance, with nerve-force. In 

 fact, the experiments of Helmholtz have proved conclusively 

 that such a comparison contradicts the truth. What is the 

 peculiar sign of the vital forces and of vital unity, or the 

 definite expression of their simultaneous action in one 

 organism, is, precisely, organization. But electricity has 

 no causal relation with organization proper. That is the 

 work of some higher activity. That power in action, what- 

 ever it be, takes to itself all the forces of Nature, but it 

 links them, coordinates them, and, fixing them into special 

 conditions, compels their service to the purposes of life. 

 Gravitation, heat, light, electricity, all these forces are 

 maintained within living beings only they are there dis- 

 guised under a new phenomenal unity, just as the oxygen, 

 hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, that make up 

 a nerve-cell, vanish in it into a new unity of substance, with- 

 out ceasing to exist in it as distinct chemical elements. The 

 inorganic powers of Nature are as essential to life as lines 

 and colors are in the composition of the painter's picture. 

 What would the picture be without the painter's soul and 

 labor ? The picture is his peculiar work : the physico-chem- 

 ical forces are the lines and colors of that homogeneous and 

 harmonious composition, which is life. In it they would 

 want meaning or power, if they did not in it, by the opera- 

 tion of a mysterious artist, undergo a transformation which 

 raises them to a dignity not theirs before, and assigns their 

 place in the supreme harmony. Thus, in the infinite soli- 

 darity of things, there is, as Leibnitz dreamed, a constant 

 uprising of the lower toward the higher, a steady progress 

 toward the best, a ceaseless aspiration toward a fuller and 

 more conscious existence, an immortal growth toward per- 

 fection. 



