184 Organization and Life. 



inquiry into life requires the combinations of physical and 

 metaphysical methods, because under the term life we include 

 things which differ as widely as human emotion and the de- 

 velopment of an egg. We say life is one, and we say nature is 

 one, but we do not mean to assert that there is no difference 

 between a granitic mountain and a shooting star, nor ought 

 we to forget the distinction that separates the function of 

 digestion from an impulse of the mind. To call life a principle 

 is to place ourselves on the highroad to confusion, because we 

 start with a definition which assumes a knowledge that we do 

 not possess; and we moreover jumble together a variety of 

 causes and effects. 



. A principle means- a beginning of some kind. The principles 

 of a science are those elementary facts and conceptions which 

 form its foundation. In another sense, a principle is a first 

 cause. We likewise find that principle is often used to signify- 

 not a sense, but a nonsense, and thus we hear of the " electrical 

 principle," the " caloric principle," the " vital principle," or 

 any similar phrase intended to give ignorance a learned look. 

 If we take life to mean all the acts and properties exhibited by 

 living beings, our first business is to separate them, and study 

 each class in an appropriate way. The phenomena that belong 

 to physical science will have a physical cause for their appear- 

 ance ; and a physical cause is not a volition, or an intelligent 

 power, but simply a condition, or assemblage of conditions, 

 that are invariably followed by another state of things that we 

 call an effect. If we ask why there is this invariable link be- 

 tween certain antecedents and certain consequents, physical 

 science cannot tell; and it is a metaphysical science that 

 resolves the difficulty by pointing to that Intelligence which is 

 the Great Cause of all. 



Those who are curious to study the history of opinion on 

 the question of vital manifestations will find it ably traced in 

 Barclay's Life and Organization, and it is interesting to note 

 that, so early as Empedocles, a bold effort was made to avoid the 

 confusion into which investigators are still apt to fall. According 

 to that philosopher every animal possessed a rational and a 

 sentient soul, the former derived from the gods, the latter from 

 the four elements of which it was imagined that the universe 

 was composed. In this rude hypothesis there is an attempt to 

 separate the phenomena of organic life from those of conscious- 

 ness, which we do not find in M. Bouchut, the latest writer on 

 the same subject, who tells us that " by vital force matter feels, 

 moves, and assumes forms more and more complicated, from the 

 creation of vivifiable organic matter to the most completely 

 organized being." This same "vital force" which has bewildered 

 so many subtle heads, M. Bouchut considers he has "de- 



