NOTES. 3724 
which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were 
purposely nliogen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of 
“first causes” for any and every special effect in the uni- 
verse, except in the same sense that the action of man or 
of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using 
such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated 
the possibility that the development of the essentially human 
portions of man’s structure and intellect may have been 
determined by the directing influence of some higher intel- 
ligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws. 
A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation, 
but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, 
incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of 
an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a 
sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence 
on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals, the 
presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than 
themselves. 
NOTE B. (Page 365.) 
A friend has suggested that I have not here explained 
myself sufficiently, and objects, ‘that life does not exist in 
matter any more than consciousness, and if the one can be 
produced by the laws of matter, why may not the other? I 
reply, that there is a radical difference between the two. 
Organic or vegetative life consists essentially in chemical 
transformations and -molecular motions, occurring under 
certain coiditions and in a certain order. The matter, and 
the forces which act upon it, are for the most part known ; 
and if there are any forces engaged in the manifesta- 
tion of vegetative life yet undiscovered (which is a moot 
question), we can conceive them as analogous to such forces 
as heat, electricity, or chemical affinity, with which we are 
already acquainted. We can thus clearly conceive of the 
transition from dead matter to living matter. A complex 
mass which suffers decomposition or decay is dead, but if 
this mass has the power of attracting to itself, from the 
surrounding medium, matter like that of which it is com- 
posed, we have the first rudiment of vegetative life. If the 
