226 
Matter Active . 
[March, 
foremost in deep mining within a few years. These condi- 
tions, combined with the peculiar susceptibility of the 
country rock to decomposition, give good reason for expect- 
ing that they will before long be the scene of thorough and 
perhaps conclusive studies in this interesting subject of 
earth temperatures. This was but a secondary part of the 
author’s work, which was chiefly confined to a geological 
study of the lode. 
IV. MATTER ACTIVE. 
“Tandem venitur ad formam substantialem qua adhuc abstradta 
per intelledtum, remanet quoddam valde occultum quod est prima 
materia.” — Albertus Magnus. 
vffiOHN DALTON. — You spoke to me lately of matter 
being dead. Death implies previous life, and in 
matter you will allow also that it implies capacity of 
living. We cannot after all expeCt matter to be alive of 
itself, — i. e., isolated from the universe, — and is it not true 
that physicists have a general belief that when heat is gone 
the worlds cease ? Human beings may be taken to illustrate 
this. If we consider any aCt — our walking, for example — 
it is only in part an aCt of our own ; we rise up, and imme- 
diately gravitation draws us down ; and if we look at dancers 
this mutual aCtion between the earth and man is more ap- 
parent. The dancer seems to be glad because, for part of a 
second, he has overcome the attraction of the great earth ; 
but he need not exult long, since down he must come, and 
the rhythmic struggle is a graceful tune of motion. It is a 
combined aCtion of man and external nature, and similarly 
the elements are inert only when there is no sympathetic 
power to aCt with them. 
Roger Bacon . — The analogy requires more than sympathy 
to complete it. The human being has a force within him- 
self, and do we not find that analogous preparation in the 
molecules ? The attraction of the earth is only a mean part 
of the work in dancing ; the sun, too, if it does warm the 
elements and allow them to aCt, does no more ; it gives no 
vitality that we know of, even when it removes that stiffness 
