38 LECTURE I. 



done, that life is more like electricity or 

 magnetism, because its operations are occa- 

 sional ; it may vary in degree, and admits of 

 being annulled or abstracted, without evi- 

 dent difference in the subject to which it 

 has belonged. My preceptors, suddenly 

 shifting their ground, call upon me to con- 

 sider life as an effect resulting from the 

 combined action of certain structures. I 

 own I am not disposed to follow such 

 leaders, yet if I do, I discover that they 

 wish me to consider life to be nothing ; 

 which I take to be the plain English of the 

 Physiology contained in some late French 

 publications relating to this subject. 



When Sir Isaac Newton explained the 

 laws of attraction, and of the motion of 

 those substances we call matter ; though he 

 wished only to announce facts, without at- 

 tempting to account for them, though re- 

 luctant to hypothesis, he afterwards felt 

 obliged to suppose that there might be an 

 agther forming a bond of connection and 

 reciprocal action between their distant mas- 

 ses and molecules. In the anatomical lec- 



19 



