OF FUNCTION; OR, HOW WE ACT. 7 



acting. Let but the temperature of the air be cooled, 

 let a little electricity be abstracted from the atmo- 

 sphere, and the force-laden vapour relaxes into water, 

 and descends in grateful showers. 



In the vapour, heat opposes the force of cohesion. 

 It is not hard to recognize a tension here ; the heat 

 being stored up in the vapour, not destroyed or 

 lost, but only latent. And when the rain descends, 

 all this heat is given off again, though perhaps not 

 as heat. It may be changed in form, and appear 

 as electricity for example, but it is the same force 

 as the heat which changed the water into vapour 

 at the first. Only its form is changed, or can be 

 changed. 



Now the living body is like vapour in this respect, 

 that it embodies force. It has grown, directly or 

 indirectly, by the light and heat of the sun, or 

 other forces, and consists not of the material elements 

 alone, but of these elements plus force. Like the 

 vapour, too, or like the spring, it constantly tends 

 to give off this force, and to relax into the inorganic 

 form. It is continually decaying ; some portion or 

 other is at every moment decomposing, and approach- 



