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CHAPTER VII. 



THE LIVING WOULD. 



THIS course of thought became the starting point, 

 in my own mind, of a further train of reflections, 

 which took a wider sweep, and which seem to me 

 to conduct to results of great importance. Let me 

 beg the reader to accompany me a short distance in 

 pursuing it. If our former arguments are sound, 

 the result at which we arrive is this that not only 

 are the organic and inorganic worlds, which seem to 

 be so different, truly one, exhibiting the same forces, 

 powers, and laws ; but life itself, or that which we 

 have called so, appears as a mere result of chemical 

 and mechanical agencies, into the effects of which 

 its most distinctive phenomena are resolved. We 

 find no special power which we can call by that name. 



