402 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



for the bud, and even the ovum in cases of parthenogenesis, may 

 grow into independent beings without ever being impregnated. 

 ]\ x or can our most powerful instruments perceive the moment when 

 the first embryo-cell receives that impress which has irrevocably 

 determined the form which the perfect being is to assume, within 

 those narrow limits which neither impregnation nor any other in- 

 fluences set in action by the sun can ever make it exceed. And 

 if life is once stopped, if interrupted, be it for a moment, no force 

 can set it in action again. It may lie dormant for a long (but not 

 perhaps indefinite) succession of years; its action may be absolutely 

 imperceptible or limited to the resistance of disorganization, until 

 recalled into more active operation by the action of the sun on 

 surrounding influences ; but if during the dormant period (of the 

 seed, egg, &c.) life has once ceased, nothing will restore it : the 

 action of the same sun upon the same surrounding influences will 

 produce decomposition, not growth. The word " force " may indeed 

 be properly limited to mechanical force, and it may be incorrect 

 to say that life is a force different in quality from other forces ; 

 but, as we must have some term equivalent to the popular sense, 

 we may call life a power different in quality from force. Dr. Car- 

 penter (p. 80) proposes to term it a germinal capacity; but it is surely 

 much more than a capacity, to be paraphrased as the " power of 

 utilizing, after its own particular fashion, the heat which it re- 

 ceives, and of applying it as a constructive power to the building 

 up of its fabric after its characteristic type" (p. 87). There is 

 here this difference between the term and its paraphrase, that the 

 one expresses a passive, the other an active idea. 



" Vegetable substances, brought into contact with their beloved 

 oxygen in the animal body, will burn within it as a fire burns in 

 the grate." True ; but that burning will be fermentation and 

 corruption, unless brought under the influence of the living parts 

 of the body to be converted into growth. I say growth, not build- 

 ing ; for building the brain and the forest is a metaphor which 

 must lead the unscientific mind far astray from all that science 

 has as yet taught us. Nothing in life is built, in the ordinary 

 "sense" of the term; no portion, no single cell, has been exter- 

 nally added to a living being ; everything has grown out of it, 

 every new cell is gradually compounded within a living cell. 



" The plant apparently seizes the combined carbon and oxygen, 

 tears them asunder, storing up the carbon, and letting the oxygen 

 free." True ; but it does much more. Every living being, animal 

 or vegetable, absorbs compound substances, decomposes them, 

 liberates at once a portion (chiefly oxygen in the case of most 

 plants), and stores up a portion. Of this portion some may be 

 deposited unchanged in visible particles in various parts of the 

 animal or plant, but some also undergoes a further decomposition 

 and dilution into a state hitherto concealed from our observation, 

 from which it emerges recombined, having already received a pe- 

 culiar impress, definitely differing in every species, or even in every 

 individual — differences then inappreciable, it is true, to our senses, 

 but evidenced by the forms the animal or plant is compelled to 



