60 On the Vitality of Matter. 



Ill.'d inquiry, Whether inert particles of matter spring to 

 life in forms and natures remote from^ and opposite to, 

 their own previous state of existence ? 



It is imagined that myriads of monads congregate upon a 

 hair immersed in water ; that having in itself a vital princi- 

 ple, it assimilates with these extraneous visitants, and they 

 with each other, until this admixture of fortuitous materials 

 becomes a living being ; that gradually " a complete animal 

 is developed, the root of the hair assuming the shape and 

 character of the head, with eyes and mouth." It is not diffi- 

 cult to conceive that a hair, by being placed in water, an 

 element where millions of ephemera occasionally reside, 

 should be covered with them so as to make an entire surface, 

 and that from its elasticity their motions should impart sinu- 

 osity through its whole length, and that it should be found 

 writhing and turning like an organized, animated being, al- 

 though no more endowed with animal life than the limb of a 

 tree, which sways backward or forward, in compliance with 

 the impulse of a boy upon its branches. But for a mass so 

 heterogeneous, and so far removed from all the habits and 

 laws which are invariable concomitants of animal life in" ev- 

 ery known instance, to obtain a head to guide its voluntary 

 motions ; a mouth whereby to receive its sustenance ; itself 

 affording aliment to a congeries of insects, creatures of a dis- 

 tinct and separate genus ; to become identified with them, 

 and spring to independent existence, and be itself the indi- 

 vidual in which they lose their identity ; is too monstrous 

 and absurd to admit of belief. It is confounding the distinc- 

 tions which divide animals from each other, and from brute 

 matter to affirm, that an integral part of a quadruped, hav- 

 ing been reduced to utter inertness, should revivify itself, 

 acquiring a head with its curious and complex organization 

 to control its movements, and from the identity of a land 

 animal to become a water serpent. If it be possible for one 

 quadruped to produce snakes, another may; and, if snakes, 

 why not other and more monstrous forms of existence ? 



Pursuing the analogy, why are not cemeteries and fields 

 of battle overgrown with night-shade and hellebore, and 

 peopled with gorgons and hydras ? But it is argued that a 

 butterfly arising from a worm is analagous to the presumed 

 metamorphosis of the gordius aquaticus. The example is 

 not a parallel one. The butterfly preserves its identity 



