14 
Before going into the evidence, it will perhaps be more in order to state 
such arguments as may be drawn from analogy and the ascertained pheno¬ 
mena of animal life. 
First, then, as to size :— 
We see all nature filled with life; and in describing what we see, we 
use certain terms of magnitude, but in the hands of the Infinite, there need 
be no scale of dimension, any more than there can be a scale of eternity, 
or of illimitable space. Within the boundary of the planet we inhabit, a 
series of proportions has of course become established, which can be applied 
to all its denizens. The medium terms of this scale are familiar to us; but 
who shall disclose the beginning or the end of it? We know not the ex¬ 
treme of diminutiveness to which organic life has reached. We do know 
what hitherto has been the limit of our observation, even when aided by the 
microscope; but so far from these discoveries enabling us to declare that we 
have attained to the first of the series of beings, we rather find indications 
of the existence of still minuter forms, expatiating in a world beyond our 
exploration.* To pursue the ideas suggested here would lead from the pre¬ 
sent subject; yet the observation may be made, that there seems no neces¬ 
sity for believing that a distinct separation exists between the material and 
the immaterial worlds; but that rather, in conformity with what we behold 
elsewhere of the graduated mode in which all things pass into each other, 
matter also, at the extremes of diminutiveness and expansion, passes into 
those subtile and intangible essences which are themselves the connecting 
links with the spiritual. According to the theories of matter, no bodies exist 
which may not suffer compression; and where compression can take place, 
there must be space between the ultimate atoms of the substance, and 
*Thc elaborate examinations that have been made regarding infusory animalcules, 
have brought vast accessions to our knowledge of animated nature. Of these atomic 
. germs of vitality, until lately, little had been discovered beyond the fact of their exist¬ 
ence ; and indeed many species, on account of their extreme minuteness, had not been 
observed at all. But the mind becomes overwhelmed and confounded, whilst we read 
(as Mr. Pritchard, in his Natural History of Animalcules, has enabled us to do) of the 
organization or vital properties of a living atom, so inconceivably minute, that 500 
millions of them in a mass would present little more than a sensible point to the unas¬ 
sisted eye. Until the introduction of vegetable colouring matter into the fluid which 
supplies them with food, these creatures were commonly supposed to be entirely devoid 
of internal^organization, and to be nourished by the simple process of cuticular absorp¬ 
tion. This erroneous notion is now set at rest, and an internal structure is discerned in 
some, equal to, if not surpassing, that of many of the larger invertebrated animals; and 
comprising a muscular, nervous, and in all probability vascular, system, all wonderfully 
contrived for the performance of their respective offices.— Abridged from the Popular 
Encyclopaedia—Article Microscope. 
