142 LIFE IN NATUKE. 



not subjected to the former as a lever or walking-stick 

 to the muscles : the more intense the life is, the less 

 does elasticity, for instance, appear as elasticity: it 

 sinks down into the nearest approach to its physical 

 form by a series of degrees, from the contraction and 

 elongation of the irritable muscle, to the physical 

 hardness of the insensitive nail. The lower powers 

 are assimilated, not merely employed, and assimila- 

 tion supposes the like nature of the thing assimilated ; 

 else it is a miracle ; only not the same as that of 

 creation, because it would imply that additional and 

 equal miracle of annihilation. In short, all the im- 

 possibilities which the acutest. of the Reformed 

 divines have detected in the hypothesis of transub- 

 stantiation would apply in the very same words to 

 that of assimilation, if the objects and the agents 

 were really of unlike kinds. Unless, therefore, 

 a thing can exhibit properties which do not belong to 

 it, the very admission that living matter exhibits 

 physical properties includes the further admission, 

 that those physical or dead properties are themselves 

 vital in essence, really distinct, but in appearance only 

 different, or in absolute contrast with each other." 



