62 M. A. Colding on the History of the 



per to the ideal of each individual plant. But, remembering the 

 fact that no force is lost, and that no force can grow up out of 

 nothing, it is clear that in the plants a new arena was opened for 

 the action of the several forces, which from this time were able 

 to take on the forms that give origin to each individual plant. 



After the vegetation had prepared the earth's surface suffi- 

 ciently for animal life to subsist, we find that animal beings 

 living on the plants or at the expense of the energy stored in 

 them were created ; and as this is a fact, I think there can be 

 no doubt that the powers of nature henceforth were able, not 

 only to sustain vegetable life and to take on the forms that suit 

 the ideal of each individual plant, but also, through vegetable 

 life, to sustain animal life, and to give to each individual animal 

 its peculiarity of form, activity, strength, and energy ; for it must 

 be allowed that neither plants nor animals get their powers out of 

 nothing. By-and-by new animals, living on the former kinds, 

 were created; and after all we find human beings at last created 

 by God. But as it must be granted that every plant, every ani- 

 mal, and of course everything that God has created, is created as 

 a necessary part of a consistent whole, it must be granted like- 

 wise that the existence of human life was not possible until the 

 earth was sufficiently prepared and cultivated by the vegetable 

 and animal life which should sustain the life of man ; that the 

 intellectual powers of man are but new forms of the powers of 

 nature; that thought itself is intellectual work, which demands 

 its nourishment equally with any other work ; and that we can- 

 not be wrong if we consider intellectual life as that form of the 

 natural forces in which they come to an understanding of them- 

 selves, their existence and their life — come to an understanding 

 of that spiritual, immaterial, and intellectual power of God 

 which guides nature in its progress towards its final state as in- 

 tellectual life. 



Following the powers of nature in their unfolding, from their 

 original state as closely and intimately connected with matter, 

 till they appear independently of matter, as free, intellectual 

 power, it is interesting to remark not only that, by the direct 

 action of the electrical, chemical, mechanical, and magnetic 

 forces, the quantity of vis viva is constantly increasing at the 

 expense of the quantity of energy intimately connected with 

 matter, but also that the same law holds true whenever we 

 arrange it so that the forces must work in the contrary way — for 

 instance, in raising a mass to a certain height, in separating the 

 chemical elements which compose a mineral, &c. — as it is always 

 necessary to employ more power to do the work than we get 

 stored up by the action, and as the surplus of power employed is 

 always liberated in the form of vis viva. Consequently the direct 



