THE LIFE OF MAN. 209 



interpret it, wherever it extends, and in all its ap- 

 plications. The resistance to force in the living 

 tissues, is nutrition; the liberation of that force 

 effects a function ; the former exists for, and is the 

 condition of, the latter. Nutrition and function 

 organization and end these are ideas which life 

 associajs with the operations of force, and they 

 belong to it simply as force. It has no special 

 endowment or prerogatives in the organic world ; it 

 presents simply its universal characters; and presents 

 them there to our eye most truly. These ideas of 

 nutrition and function are not of special, but of 

 universal scope. All storing up of force is a nutri- 

 tion; all liberation of it is the effecting of a function. 

 To see the world as it is, we must carry this picture 

 in our eye ; to feel it rightly, our hearts must cast 

 all things into this mould. For it is not in the 

 material alone that this law has its place. It 

 extends as widely, and soars as high as Life ; it is 

 the key above all to our own. All strife and failure, 

 all subjection, baffling, wrong ; these are nutrition, 

 they are the instruments of Life, the prophecies of its 

 perfect ends. They store up the power, they make 



14 



