22 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO i. 



Hence without parent by spontaneous birth 



Rise the first specks of animated earth ; 



From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims, 



And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs. 250 



" IN earth, sea, air, around, below, above, 

 Life's subtle woof in Nature's loom is wove; 



their fibres. The attractive and repulsive ethers require only the 

 vicinity of bodies for the exertion of their activity, but the contrac- 

 tive ether requires at first the contact of a goad or stimulus, which 

 appears to draw it off" from the contracting fibre, and to excite the 

 sensorial power of irritation. These contractions of animal fibres 

 are afterwards excited or repeated by the sensorial poM-ers of sensation, 

 volition, or association, as explained at large in Zoonomia, Vol. I. 



There seems nothing more wonderful in the ether of contraction 

 producing the shortening of a fibre, than in the ether of attraction 

 causing two bodies to approach each other. The former indeed 

 seems in some measure to resemble the latter, as it probably occasions 

 the minute particles of the fibre to approach into absolute or adhe- 

 sive contact, by withdrawing from them their repulsive atmospheres; 

 whereas the latter seems only to cause particles of matter to ap- 

 proach into what is popularly called contact, like the particles of 

 fluids; but which are only in the vicinity of each other, and still re- 

 tain their repulsive atmospheres, as may be seen in riding through 

 shallow water by the number of minute globules of it thrown up by 

 the horses feet, which roll far on its surface; and by the difficulty with 

 which small globules of mercury poured on the surface of a quantity 

 of it can be made to unite with it. 



Spontaneous birth, 1. 247. See additional Note, No. I. 



