ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
21 
obtain a knowledge of material nature, is, that it must be consi- 
dered as made up of two general elements, substance and action , 
the former having weight in the scale, and occupying space, and 
the latter being altogether invisible. 
Thus, every vegetable and animal, every growing and living 
thing in the material creation, is made up of two parts, — its mate- 
rial substance, of which the being itself can neither originate nor 
destroy a single atom, and its peculiar action, or life, which makes 
it an animal or a vegetable, or one species of either, and not an- 
other. 
This last, as determining the grand outlines of the character of 
every individual, may be considered as the essential part of it, as 
the agent; while the mere matter — the substance of which its 
frame or body, however shaped or organized, or whether large or 
small, is composed — can be regarded only as the instrument with 
which the agent works. This agent is a truly wonderful power, 
and must excite our admiration. 
“ Search undismayed the dark profound, 
Where Nature works in secret; trace the forms 
Of atoms, moving in incessant change 
Their elemental round : behold the seeds 
Of Being, and the energy of Life, 
Kindling the mass with ever active flame, — 
Then say if nought in these external scenes 
Can move thy wonder ?” 
Not a sparrow falls to the ground without its controul ; there is 
not a mote that dances in the sunbeam, or a particle, it may be not 
the millionth part of a mote, which is not as much under its go- 
vernment as the mightiest mass of creation. 
We have a very good example of this powerful agency in the 
extraordinary activity, and almost incredibly rapid development, 
of cellular structure in a plant. There is a species of fungus, the 
“ Bo vista gigantum,” that has been known to acquire the size of 
a gourd in one night. Now, supposing, with Professor Lindley, 
that the minute cells of this plant are not less than the -jf^th of 
an inch in diameter, a plant of the above size will contain no less 
than forty-seven hundred million cellules ; so that, supposing it to 
have grown in the course of twelve hours, its cellules must have 
been developed at the rate of more than sixty-six millions in a 
minute. 
Now, it requires no argument to prove, that if matter, in all its 
forms, in all its varieties, according to our notions of them, is 
made up of elementary particles so infinitely small, that action , 
on matter of whatever kind it may be, and the effect produced by 
that action, must be ultimately divisible with the same degree of 
minuteness, so that the effect of any cause acting upon matter 
