( 205 ) 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE LIFE OF MAN. 



BUT though organic life exhibits nature thus 

 bounded and tied down, its characters are not the 

 less rich in meaning. The laws which rule in it 

 are the universal laws, and speak the universal 

 language, exhibiting spiritual things to the eye of 

 sense. What other than a spiritual fact is this, the 

 most essential character of life : that it depends 

 upon the resistance or control of one form of force 

 by another? A passive force (properly called a 

 "passion"), kept in subjection, and only in regulated 

 and determined modes suffered to come into play ; 

 on this the seeming Life in Nature depends. Docs 

 it not speak to us of that control of passion which is 

 Life indeed within us? Only by resistance, by 



