FIRST REPLY. 153 



the service of the animal, which builds up its corporeal 

 frame from the latter and burns the former in the respira- 

 tory process, for the maintenance of the necessary heat.* 

 This theory stands now firm and unshakeable upon the 

 facts which have been brought forward, and the naturalist 

 is perfectly correct when he says, that Man, through the 

 mediation of plants in the first instance, lives upon air. 

 Or we may express it in this way : the plant collects the 

 matters from the atmosphere, and compounds from them 

 the food of Man. But life itself is but a process of com- 

 bustion, of which decomposition is only the final conclusion. 

 Through this combustion all the constituents return back 

 into the air, and only a small quantity of ashes remain to 

 the earth from which they came. But from these slow, 

 invisible flames rises a new-born Phrenix, the immortal soul, 

 into regions where our Science has no longer any value. 



* See Dumas and Boussingault's " Organic Nature." 



