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organised state , — dead matter j as it is sometimes called,* 
which, nevertheless, we behold by the aid of science instinct 
with marvellous endowments and with never-ceasing activities; 
indestructible apparently, though ever changing in its mani- 
festations, not losing its own peculiar nature when subjected 
for a time to the vital force, nor coalescing with life ; but, 
when life has departed, returning to its old chemical affinities ; 
evermore displaying the glory of God to those who can skill 
to trace the mathematical precision of all the infinitely varied 
forms and combinations in which it presents itself to the mind 
of the student of Nature. 
But, till we have organization, we never find the adaptation 
of all the parts to the good of the whole. Still less do we 
discover that which, at first indistinctly indicated in the 
vegetable creation, manifests itself in the very lowest forms of 
animal life, and even in those creations which seem to pass 
from one kingdom (as we used to say) to the other in the 
course of their brief lives. 
I refer to the individual will of the mere sac of living 
matter that, as the amoeha, knows how to enclose its prey at 
its pleasure, for the satisfaction of its appetite ; or as a vibrio 
can direct its free motions not without aim of its own. For 
each creature has its own free will. 
When we look at the world of organized existence, we find 
that every living thing has its own individuality, and is 
endowed with a property of first developing that individuality 
out of an embryo at first shapeless and formless, and then of 
maintaining that individuality and even of reproducing parts 
that are accidentally rendered defective, as the lobster repro- 
duces its claws according to the type. Some such explana- 
tion must be given to what physicians call the vis medicatrix 
naturce. 
Moreover, each creature has the power of reproduction of its 
own image; sometimes the formative idea passing through 
even three or four intermediate types in which it could not be 
recognised, but the chrysalis produces in its perfection the 
special butterfly to which the perfect realisation of the type 
tends from the beginning. 
Nature is creative and upholding, not by any inherent power 
of its own, but by the will and power of the Supreme, who 
acts in and through his creatures, for in Him we live, and 
* I object to the term dead matter as entirely unscientific and misleading. 
“Deprived of life” is the first meaning given to the word “ dead” in the 
English Dictionary I turn to, but “matter” has never been deprived of life/^ 
