“178 NATURE AND LIFE. 
sucha hope. Not only is electricity far from being the whole 
of life, but it cannot even be regarded as one of the elements 
of life, or be compared, for instance, with nerve-force. In 
fact, the experiments of Helmholtz have proved conclusively 
that such a comparison contradicts the truth. What is the 
peculiar sign of the vital forces and of vital unity, or the 
definite expression of their simultaneous action in one 
organism, is, precisely, organization. But electricity has 
no causal relation with organization proper. That is the 
work of some higher activity. That power in action, what- 
ever it be, takes to itself all the forces of Nature, but it 
links them, cobrdinates them, and, fixing them into special 
conditions, compels their service to the purposes of life. 
Gravitation, heat, light, electricity, all these forces are 
maintained within living beings—only they are there dis- 
guised under a new phenomenal unity, just as the oxygen, 
hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, that make up 
a nerve-cell, vanish in it into anew unity of substance, with- 
out ceasing to exist in it as distinct chemical elements. The 
inorganic powers of Nature are as essential to life as lines 
and colors are in the composition of the painter’s picture. 
What would the picture be without the painter’s soul and 
labor ? The picture is his peculiar work: the physico-chem- 
ical forces are the lines and colors of that homogeneous and 
harmonious composition, which is life. In it they would 
want meaning or power, if they did not in it, by the opera- 
tion of a mysterious artist, undergo a transformation which 
raises them to a dignity not theirs before, and assigns their 
place in the supreme harmony. ‘Thus, in the infinite soli- 
darity of things, there is, as Leibnitz dreamed, a constant 
uprising of the lower toward the higher, a steady progress 
toward the best, a ceaseless aspiration toward a fuller and 
more conscious existence, an immortal growth toward per- 
fection. 
