THE NATURE OF LIFE. 
185 
struggles against all the powers that may tend to interrupt its 
exercise. We confess that we never could discover any such 
presiding genius, and we acknowledge no other invisible power 
that watches over animated machines than their Creator. The 
hand of a Divine Artist is every where visible ; and he who can 
lock through the range of Nature’s works, and not admire,—he 
who can admire, and not adore,—falls short of what Nature in¬ 
tended him for, and is deficient in the first blessings of an en- 
lightened mind. 
Search, undismayed, the dark profound, 
Where Nature works in secret; trace the forms 
Of atoms, moving with 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 naught in these external scenes 
Can move thy wonder 
If there is any one prevailing substance in the animated 
machine that deserves the name of vital principle more than 
another, it is the.ft/ooJ. The tenet of the Mosaic philosophy, 
that in the blood 'll the life thereof,’’ must be allowed its full 
weight in its literal as well as figurative sense : 
“ The fountain whence the spirits flow, 
The generous stream that waters every part, 
And motion, vigour, and w^arm life conveys 
To every particle that moves or lives.'’ 
And whether it deserves the title or not, of this we are certain, 
that it is one of the vital properties. 
This brings us immediately to our subject; for we are of opi¬ 
nion, that, in all diseases arising from aerial poison, the blood is 
diseased; and that the diseased action of the solids is as much 
the effect of the diseased state of the blood, as it is in those cases 
where we can cause disease by injecting a poisoned fluid im¬ 
mediately into the circulating current. 
It has been too much the fashion for nearly a century past, 
to overlook almost entirely the diseased state of the fluids. 
Ancient physicians believed that a diseased state of the fluids 
was the cause of every disease; whilst those of the present day, 
on the contrary, attribute almost all the ills that poor flesh is 
heir to” to the solids. In our humble opinion, they were both 
in error; for the different parts of the body, the fluids as well 
as the solids, may undergo modifications in a state of disease. 
Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt.— Hor. 
[To be conlinuecl.] 
