58 On the Vitality of Matter. 



acceptation ? The term death implies a change from tlir 

 power of acting to total inactivity. It implies an utter and 

 irrecoverable extinguishment of sensation, and the faculty of 

 motion. Inertness expresses the state of matter without life, 

 and without any innate principle of revivification. 



If the water were not withdrawn, would those particles of 

 matter remain stationary, or would they increase in dimen- 

 sions ; or would they change into other living beings ; or 

 form other and unknown combinations ? Whatever their 

 shape or location, whether they remain units forever, or ex- 

 perience transformation, if they are indued with an inherent 

 living spirit, they must be immortal. A thing possessing an 

 innate principle of vitality cannot be dispossessed of it, un- 

 less it is annihilated. If annihilation can dispossess a mate- 

 rial monad of existence, the same principle may apply to 

 masses of matter, and the balance of the globe be destroyed 

 by its operation. The order being disturbed which rules the 

 planets in their spheres, and establishes the symmetry of the 

 universe, the whole might rush into chaos, or evanish into 

 nonentity. 



But to return to the vitality of material elements. Animal 

 and vegetable matter having been interred in the earth, or 

 decomposed upon its surface, for nearly six thousand years, 

 if the particles were immortal in the animalcular form, the 

 grave would not secure them, and the earth by their accu- 

 mulation would be heaving and rolling under our feet. 

 There is abundant evidence, however, that bodies continue 

 in the grave long after their inhumation. A single instance 

 is sufficient for the argument. The remains of Charles I. 

 of England were discovered a few years since, after having 

 been interred two hundred years. They were found in their 

 natural state, so far as to be readily identified, and exhibited 

 every appearance of inert matter, resolved and resolving into 

 elementary dust. 



The microscopic theorists having conducted us to the low- 

 est gradation of existence, remark that " physiologists can 

 carry analysis no farther, except to convert the substance into 

 gases by distillation." If so, where is the vital principle 

 then ? Can distillation extinguish that principle which re- 

 sisted death and all the previous stages of decomposition ? 

 If " life and matter are coexistent, and from everlasting to 

 everlasting," it is absurd to say that distillation, or any other 



