DEFINITIONS. 189 



different in itself. Yet Natural History having attracted 

 the attention of the world long before Chemistry, it re- 

 mained long unobserved that organized matter was no- 

 thing but a peculiar modification of brute matter acted 

 upon by the vital principle. It was in some measure for- 

 gotten that man himself, the most perfect of organized be- 

 ings, had been subjected to the dread sentence, " Dust 

 thou art, and to dust thou shalt return ; " and the mineral 

 kingdom was thus separated from the other two, without 

 its being considered upon what basis the true nature of 

 this separation ought to rest. 



The truth however is, that the first great division of 

 Matter is not yet ascertained; and the knowledge of it, to 

 say nothing of the celestial bodies, must in a great degree 

 depend on the labours of the chemist, who has hitherto so 

 little elucidated the nature of heat, light, and many others 

 of those subtle substances which are possibly forms of 

 matter. Until this great desideratum of natural science 

 shall be attained, we must remain satisfied with the divi- 

 sion of Matter into organic and inorganic, not only as per- 

 fectly agreeable to what we should be led to expect from 

 analogy, but as convenient, provided we do not form er- 

 roneous ideas of its real signification. It ought always 

 however to be borne in mind, that an organized being is 

 nothing but inorganic matter modified, and undergoing 

 the temporary influence of a certain energy with which 

 we are totally unacquainted except as to its effects. This 

 energy then, or life, is to be accounted the true distinctive 

 principle in material bodies ; and though the crystallization 

 of a mineral may show that even brute matter has been 

 subjected to certain laws by nature, yet there is nothing 

 to be found in it any ways resembling the assimilation, 



