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first supposed. But this slight difficulty not having occurred 
to him, the animal body is accepted as a finished machine, 
which is now ready for the “ kindling of consciousness,” which 
he confidently anticipates may turn out to be a more refined 
form of heat evolved by mechanical laws. With this impres- 
sion, he marches boldly up to the new line of inquiry, which 
relates to the connection between this machine and a highly 
poetical or idealized force, sometimes called the soul. To say 
nothing of these little difficulties, which have hindered us from 
going forward with him at the rapid pace which he has assumed, 
there are otherswliich compel us still to followhimhauclpassibus 
cequis. We are not satisfied that he has disposed of sundry 
other questions which may be asked in respect to the “ animal 
body.” Conceding that in breathing and eating and muscular 
action, this body is a machine or a voltaic battery, and not in- 
sisting on the peculiarity of the function by which the nerves 
transfer or liberate motion, which Prof. Tyndall has scarcely 
recognized and imperfectly explained, we hold that this body 
performs other functions, which the doctrine of the conserva- 
tion of force does not at all account for, and which are not 
proved to be mechanical by Prof. TyndalTs argument, or the 
analogies which it suggests. We need only refer to these. 
This body grows by a peculiar method, through cellular acces- 
sion from within, from living food, making thereby new and 
peculiar tissues in great variety. Many of these tissues 
become organs which are capable of secreting special fluids or 
substances, which themselves pass by an orderly succession 
into the various permanent substances of the body. Each 
organ secretes that which finally returns to itself, increasing its 
bulk, following its form, and fitting for its function. These 
parts grow after a plan, which is general in likeness of form, 
size, and symmetry, so far as it is common to all living bodies, 
special so far as it is peculiar to each species, and individual so 
far as it is fitted to each individual. Not any one of these 
effects has ever been accounted for by the joint operation of 
any known mechanical or chemical laws, much less by their 
sole or separate activity ; least of all with the slightest approxi- 
mation to that mathematical rigour which Prof. Tyndall contends 
is the indispensable requisite of scientific certainty. All that 
can be said has been said by Prof. Tyndall, that so far as heat 
and muscular activity are concerned, there is probable corre- 
lation between the two — that in living matter as truly as in 
inorganic matter, the combinations in growth and the decom- 
positions of waste are chemical in their ingredients and chemical 
in their relations. This is not surprising — did not the living 
body consist of materials which obey mechanical and chemical 
