46 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO rr. 



Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass, 



And gives a while solidity to gas; 40 



Organic forms with chemic changes strive. 



Live but to die, and die but to revive! 



Immortal matter braves the transient storm, 



Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form. 



Combines with Heat, 1. 39. It was shown in note on line 248 of 

 the first Canto, that much of the aerial and liquid parts of the terra- 

 queous globe was converted by the powers of life into solid matter; 

 and that this was effected by the combination of the fluid, heat, with 

 other elementary bodies by the appetencies and propensities of the 

 parts of living matter to unite M'ith each other. But when these 

 appetencies and propensities of the parts of organic matter to unite 

 with each other cease, the chemical affinities of attraction and the 

 aptitude to be attracted, and of repulsion and the aptitude to be 

 repelled, succeed, and reduce much of the solid matters back to the 

 condition of elements; which seems to be effected by the matter of 

 heat being again set at -liberty, which was combined with other 

 matters by the powers of life; and thus by its diffusion the solid 

 bodies return into liquid ones or into gasses, as occurs in the pro- 

 cesses of fermentation, putrefaction, sublimation, and calcination. 

 Whence solidity appears to be produced in consequence of the dimi- 

 nution of heat, as the condensation of steam into water, and the con- 

 solidation of water into ice, or by the combination of heat with 

 bodies, as with the materials of gun-powder before its explosion. 



Immortal matter, 1. 43. The perpetual mutability of the forms of 

 matter seems to have struck the philosophers of great antiquity; the 

 system of transmigration taught by Pythagoras, in which the souls of 

 men were supposed after death to animate the bodies of a variety of 

 animals, appears to have arisen from this source. He had observed 

 the perpetual changes of organic matter from one creature to another, 

 and concluded, that the vivifying spirit must attend it. 



