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ject to change or modifications, like the other properties of 

 matter, when chemical affinity is exerted with the result of 

 producing combination. The act of combination always pro- 

 duces more or less alteration of the chief properties of the 

 combining bodies, and therefore it may be presumed that so 

 important a property as vitality does not escape the universal 

 change, and that by a succession of such modifications it may 

 be exalted to any required degree. This happens in some way 

 which art cannot accomplish, but which may be closely imi- 

 tated during the operation of that kind of chemical affinity 

 which produces voltaic phenomena. The voltaic current pos- 

 sesses so much the character of life that it overpowers the 

 real vital principle in the living, simulates it in the dead, and 

 actually restores it to a body which, to all appearance, had 

 ceased to live, and never would have breathed more. 



" As to the manner in which these exaltations of vitality 

 are brought about, nothing but conjecture can be offered ; 

 several modes may be imagined. It is indisputable that there 

 are many kinds of life, as has been already evidenced in the 

 different conditions of animals and vegetables. It has been 

 the chief object of this Essay to render it probable that there 

 is a different and lower grade of vitality, this being a property 

 of all inorganic matter ; and the mode of reasoning on this 

 question was, that such an assumption accords best with the 

 phenomena of Nature. When chemical action occasions new 

 combinations, a change in the vital state of the matter con- 

 cerned may take place amongst the alterations of properties 

 which always occur in these cases; and the subject of the 

 new combinations may pass into one or other of the states just 

 mentioned. 



" This view is taken under the assumption that life in 

 different instances is different in kind ; but an explanation may 

 be conceived, under the supposition that it differs in degree, 

 the kind remaining the same throughout, in which case the 



