22 NATURE AND LIFE. 
Yet nothing in the ovule reveals its hidden and potent 
virtuality. Claude Bernard, who has repeated Coste’s ideas 
on this subject, dwells strongly on the guiding force which 
is in the egg, and those savants who agree with Robin in 
denying this force, so far as it acts on the totality of ele- 
ments in the embryo, regard it at least as shared, distrib- 
uted, and acting in each of these elements separately, which, 
at bottom, is the same thing. We see, in any case, that 
there is in the inmost depth, and there dates from the most 
rudimentary sketch of the organized being, the fixed and 
formed idea of those differences in choice and those sym- 
pathies in work whose system shall build up the individual. 
The differential coefficient of organized matter is thus of a 
far higher order than that of mineral matter. It is this 
which is a distinct and peculiar result from the impotence 
which experimental science betrays more plainly every 
day, when attempting to convert physico-chemical activi- 
ties into energies of the vital order. Even could this con- 
version really be effected, and it is not metaphysically 
impossible that it might be, the existence of a spiritual 
principle of differentiation would be in no wise put in 
doubt. Hitherto, at least, such a conversion seems beyond 
the reach of man. | 
Something that yet more completely baffles his research, 
while commanding too his highest admiration, is the su- 
preme degree of complexity together with refinement of 
that energy which is the soul. Human thought is the sum 
of all the forces of Nature, because it assimilates them all, 
while distinguishing between them, by the work that it 
performs upon sensations. Sensations are to thought what 
food is to growth. Growth is not a result of feeding; 
thought is not a result of sensations. Nutrition, in shap- 
ing the living organs, determines the differentiation of the 
concrete forms in the individual’s substance; thought, in 
shaping general ideas, determines the differentiation of the 
