THE NATURAL AND THE ARTIFICIAL. 199 



agency of a kind with which nothing can compare. It orders, 

 directs, enforces, compels. Gravitation, attraction, affinity, yield 

 for the time to its sway. It seems to directly influence the matter 

 itself, not to act upon it from a distance however slight. Elements 

 seem to be separated, rearranged, and grouped in a manner inex- 

 plicable and effected by no other means known. It works according 

 to definite plan, according to design predetermined and repeated 

 over enormous periods of time, and without impairment. Organs, 

 structures, actions of which there is at first no evidence seem to be 

 anticipated and prepared for, it may be years before their actual 

 formation or occurrence. Vital power seems to be transferred 

 from particle to particle, sometimes without modification during 

 vast periods of time ; sometimes on the other hand leading to the 

 production of new forms that never existed before. 



To attribute all the marvellous and unceasing vital activities to 

 the passive properties of material particles seems most unreason- 

 able, for is not obviously the power which influencing the same 

 material particles for a very short time, soon subjects new ones to 

 its influence, being in fact transferred from one set of particles to 

 another, that is the real cause ? This activity, this vital directive 

 agency, without loss, change, or conversion into anything else may 

 spread and increase for ages, or be made to cease for ever at any 

 moment of its progress. The evidences of its action may be patent 

 for aeons after the period of its active operation and extinction, 

 and the very organisms depicted from the study of their imperish- 

 able remains — or on the other hand not a vestige of the operation 

 of vital power may be demonstrable, a very short time after enor- 

 mous amounts of matter have been caused to live. 



For all these wonderful vital phenomena, the matter actually 

 concerned in the early changes of the living being, may be so 

 minute as not to be discernible with the aid of the highest mag- 

 nifying power at our disposal, and its weight may be hundreds of 

 times less than a particle just sufficient to affect the most delicate 

 balance. But such invisible structureless, colourless particle may 

 be the repository and carrier of vital power that may be trans- 

 ferred to tons of matter v/ithm a verj* short period of time, and an 



