W^Ft^ Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2011 witii funding from Tine Library of Congress Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/lifeitsnaturevar01grin / LIFE NATURE, VARIETIES, AND PHENOMENA. >fl y L E O r< H : G R I N D O N , LECTURER ON BOTANY AT THE ROYAL SCHOOL OP MEDICINE, MANCHESTER; AUTHOR OV "EMBLEMS," " FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE," ETC. V FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, C PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO, 1867. .J PREFACE. The object of this work is two-fold. First, it is proposed to give a popular account of the phenomena which indicate the presence of that mysterious, sustaining force we denominate Life, or Vitality, and of the laws which appear to govern their mani- festation; secondly, will be considered those Spiritual, or Emo- tional and Intellectual States, which collectively constitute the essential history of our temjjoral lives, rendering existence either pleasurable or painful. The inquiry will thus embrace all the most interesting and instructive subjects alike of physiology and psychology : the constitution and functions of the bodies in which we dwell ; the delights which attend the exercise of the intellect and the affections ; the glory and loveliness of the works of God, will all come under notice, and receive their fitting meed of illus- tration. Especially will the practical value and interest of life be pointed out ; the unity and fine symmetry of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; the poetry of "common things," and the intimate dependence of the whole upon Him in whom " we live, and move, and have our being. ' ' Man, as the noblest recipi- ent, upon earth, of the divine life, will naturally be the principal object of consideration; not, however, the only one. Seeing that he is the Archetype of the entire system of living things, the principles of a true doctrine concerning Mm become the 4 PEEFACE. principles of Natural History in every one of its departments. Animals, plants, even tlie inorganic world of minerals, mil all, therefore, be taken account of, in so far as will be needful to the general purpose of the volume. To those who care for the illus- tration which physical science casts upon the science of mind, and upon the truths of Revelation, there will probably be much that is both novel and inviting. In fact, it has been sedulously aimed to show how intimate and striking is the relation of human knowledges, and how grand is the harmony of things natural and divine. Some readers may regard the combination of ph poetiy, and theology, so eminently characteristic of the -...^. ters, as detrimental to their value, since the subjects in question are commonly regarded as incongruous. It is sufficient to say, in anticipation of such criticism, that one great aim of the entire work is to show the essential consanguinity of every form of human thought and human feeling. There has been no hesita- tion in dealing with some of the most sacred of topics. The physical and the spiritual worlds are in such close connection, that to attempt to treat philosophically of either of them apart from the other, is to divorce what Grod has joined together. Though the authorized teacher of holy things undoubtedly has his special office, it is no invasion, therefore, of his prerogative to speak ' ' religiously' ' on themes so high and beautiful as the attestations of the divine love expressed in nature. Science without religion is empty and unvital. Tnie wisdom, finding the whole world expressive of God, calls upon us to walk at all times and in all places, in the worship and reverent contemplation of Him. Wishful at all times to speak modestly, and upon sacred matters always most reverently, if a single sentence in the volume can be shown not to be in accordance with, or can be proved contrary to a right and true interpretation of Scripture. PREFACE. it is here, once for all, acknowledged false, and declared un- spoken. The views which are set forth lay few claims to originality. They are such as have been held by select thinkers in every age, though perhaps never before expressed connectedly, or in similar -terms. Not that the book is a mere compilation of time-worn facts. Several of the chapters, such as those upon Rejuve- nescence, and the Prefigurations of Nature, deal with subjects hitherto scarcely touched. Neither are the views here offered fin til -■ binding on a single reader; they are offered as opinions fviTx- ictions rather than as dogmas. Certainly, most part of the work is written affirmatively, but this must be taken only as indicating earnestness of conviction ; anything like dogmatizing is altogether disclaimed. They are views which have brought inexpressible hapjDiness to the writer ; and they are offered in the hope that, whUe they may render the strange mystery of life less perplexing, they will help to render others happy likewise. That the book is in many respects greatly deficient, no one can become more sensible than the author is. It would be remark- able were it otherwise, when the vast extent of the subject is considered, and the impossibility of compressing it into moderate limits. Ordinaril}'^, those subjects have been preferred for con- sideration which are least commonly attended to. Some may seem to call for more lengthy treatment than they receive ; but they are designedly curtailed, because already discussed in extenso by authors of repute. Such are Sleep, and the Brain. The incompleteness of the remarks upon others is compensated in the author's separate writings. A large number of quotations will be found, ample reference being made to the authorities in all the more important of them, and the remainder acknowledged in the usual manner. The reader who is acquainted with the 6 PREFACE. authors cited will not regret to meet old friends ; and to the younger student, they may be valuable as pointing to new sources of information. Inserted, as a considerable portion of them have been, purely from memory, exercised over a long and diver- sified course of reading, it has been impossible always to authen- ticate minutely. For the benefit of the younger reader, copious references to the literature of the subject are also introduced ; the book forming, in this respect, a kind of index. Appended will be found an appropriate adjunct to the subject of Life, in the shape of a little essay on "Times and Seasons,'' CONTEI^TS. CHAPTER I. PAQg General idea of Life, and universality of its presence — Latent life-- Value of the doctrine sought to be established ,..,,,, ,, 11 CHAPTER II. The Source of life, and the rationale of life — The essence of life un- discoverable — Laws of Nature.. .,...,,. 26 CHAPTER III. The varieties of life — Organic life — The vital stimuli — Correlation of forces 38 CHAPTER IV. Food — Molecular death and reneAval of the body — Specialities of food — Hunger the source of moral order — Hunger and love the world's two great ministers 67 CHAPTER V. The Atmosphere in its relation to life — Respiration — The Heart and the Lungs — Respiration of plants — Trees in grave-yards 77 CHAPTER VL Motion the universal Sign of life — -Motion in plants — Motion needful to Beauty — The Sea and the Clouds — Repose 100 CHAPTER VIL Death — Causes of physical death — The Blood — The nervous system — Tenacity of Life — Death of plants 11] 5 CONTENTS. CHAPTER virr. PAGE The various leases of life — Lease of life in plants — Trees — Death bal- anced by reproduction 128 CHAPTER IX. Duration of life in Animals — Leases of the Mammalia; of Birds ; of Fishes and Reptiles; of Insects — Lease of Human Life 152 CHAPTER X. Grounds of the various lease of life — Spiritual basis of nature — The material world representative only — Materialism and Spiritualism.. 175 CHAPTER XI. Grounds of the various lease of life, continued — Correspondence of Nature and Mind — Leases of extinct animals and plants — The Pre- Adamite world — Geology and Psychology „ 194 CHAPTER XIL The spiritual expression of life — Nature and Seat of the Soul — The Soul a spiritual body 207 CHAPTER XIIL Soul, Spirit, Ghost — Meaning of these words — Philosophy of Lan- guage — Anima and Animus — Psyche and Pneuma — Summary 227 CHAPTER XIV. True idea of Youth and Age — Age no matter of Birth-days — The In- tellect in advanced life — Life is Love 249 CHAPTER XV. The affections in relation to life — -Love of Nature — Poetry of Com- mon things — The Imagination — Natural History and the Pulpit — Town versus Country ^ 261 CHAPTER XVL The Intellectual faculties in relation to Life — True idea of Education —Reading— The Friendship of Books 2S0 CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER XVII. PAGE The Religious Element of Life — True idea of Religious Sects — Worldly pleasures and Religion 298 CHAPTER XVIII. Life realized by Activity — -Action the law of Happiness — Ennui — Art of Conversation — -PJay .311 CHAPTER XIX. Death in relation to the spiritual life — -Scriptural meanings of Death. 333 CHAPTER XX. Rejuvenescence — Death an operation of Life — Sleep — Spring — The Poem of Geology — Flowering plants and Humanity — New doc- trines and old 344 CHAPTER XXL Health and Disease — The miracle of Healing — Rationale of mira- cles—Unity of Truth 366 CHAPTER XXIL Mortality and Immortality — Life to be made the most of — Sorrow for the Dead — Why is man immortal? — Doctrine of the immortality of brutes 386 CHAPTER XXIIL The Resurrection and the Future Life — True and false emblems of Death — Dreams — The Spiritual World 406 CHAPTER XXIV. The Analogies of Nature — Law of Prefiguration 425 CHAPTER XXV. The Chain of Nature — Continuous and Discrete Degrees — Law of Promotion 447 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVI. PAGB The Unity of Nature — Homology- — True principles of Classification of organized beings 470 CHAPTER XXVIl. Man the Epitome of Nature — Three Kingdoms of the Human Body — Three Degrees of Human Life 497 CHAPTER XXVIII. Instinct and Reason — Instinct co-ordinate with Life — Specialties of Instinct 509 CHAPTER XXIX. Instinct and Reason, continued — Instinct in Man — Reason and Intelli- gence ,.... 521 CHAPTER XXX. Summary— Inspiration — Life epitomized in Genius 536 TIMES AND SEASONS 545 LIFE. CHAPTER I. GENERAL IDEA OF LIFE, AND UNIVEBSAIITT OF ITS FMESENCE. 1. Life is the loftiest subject of philosophy. There is no place where life is not present; and there never was a time when life was not. In the great composite fact of a Ckea- TOE are involved the elemental facts of Omnipresence and Eternity of existence; and these, in turn, involve Infinite Creative Activity, which is the production and sustentation of arenas of ever-renovated life. To suppose the Creator ever to have been inactive or unproducing, would be to sup- pose him inconsistent with himself. Doubtless every one of the innumerable orbs of the universe had a beginning, — some, probably, were created long subsequently to others, and are comparatively in their childhood; but a period when there Avere no worlds, — no terraqueous scenes of the bestowal of the Divine Love, the mind is incapable of con- ceiving. Ancient as our own world is, there were "morning stars" which "sang together" at its nativity. That such scenes of life do really exist, certainly we neither know, nor is it probable that it lies within the power of man scien- tifically to determine; but the affirmative is congenial alike to reason, philosophy, and enlarged ideas of God. Truth in such matters is determined by balancing probabilities, rather than by rigid, mathematical demonstration. If the 11 12 PROPER MEANING OF THE TERM LIFE. former proposition be admissible, namely, that an inactive, unproducing Creator is a contradiction in terms, the "plu- rality of worlds" is a corollary almost inevitable. "Life was not made for matter, but matter for life. In whatever spot we see it, whether at our feet, or in the planet, or in the remotest star, we may be sure that life is there, — life physical to enjoy its beauties — life moral to worship its maker — life intellectual to proclaim his wisdom and his power." Doubt- less, too, every shape of organized existence had its own special era of commencement, as illustrated in the sequen- tialism of the fossils beneath our feet ;* but those very fossils show at the same moment, ttat organic life is contempora- neous with the consolidation of the worlds which it embel- lishes, and thus with the dayspring of Time.- The very purpose of a world's creation is that it shall be at once clothed and made beautiful with life. "For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, — God himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it; He created it not in vain ; He formed it to be inhabited." 2. Under the term Life, however, rightly regarded, is comprehended far more than it is ordinarily used to denote. We err, if when thinking of the habitations of life we associate it only with ourselves, animals, and plants. Life, in its proper, generic sense, is the name of the sustaining * The non-geological reader may be apprised that the petrified remains of animals and plants, which form so large a portion of col- lections of natural curiosities, are not mixed indiscriminately in the earth, but always occupy the same relative places, — that is, every layer or stratum, or at least every group of strata, has its peculiar fossils, showing that there must have been as many distinct creations as there are changes in the character of the relics. When plants and animals first appeared upon our planet, geology will probably never be able to point out, nor even to calculate. Azoic rocks are no proof of azoic periods. ITS UNIVERSALITY. 18 principle by which everything out of the Creator subsists, whether worlds, metals, minerals, trees, animals, mankind, angels, or devils, together with all thought and feeling. Nothing is absolutely lifeless, though many things are relatively so ; and it is simply a conventional restriction of the term, which makes life signify no more than the vital energy of an organized, material body, or the phenomena in which that energy is exhibited. Though in man life be at its maximum, it is not to be thought of as concentrated in him, nor even in " animated nature," outside of which there is as much life as there is inside ; though not the same expres- sion of life. "The life which works in your organized frame," said Laon, "is but an exalted condition of the power which occasions the accretion of particles into this crystalline mass. The quickenmg force of nature through every form of being is the same."* "The characteristic," observes another quick-sighted writer, "which, manifested in a high degree, we call Life, is a characteristic manifested only in a lower degree by so-called inanimate objects."t Hufeland, Oersted, Humboldt, Coleridge, in his " Theory of Life," Arnold Guyot, in "The Earth and Man," and many others, express themselves in similar terms, none, however, more explicitly than the distinguished Carus: — "The idea of Life is co-extensive with Universal Nature. The indi- vidual or integrant parts of Nature are the members; uni- versal nature is the total and complete organism. The relations of inorganic to organized bodies exist only by reason of this; hence, too, the universal connection, the combination, the never-ceasing action and re-action of all the powers of nature, producing the vast and magnificent * "Pantliea; or, tlie Spirit of Nature," by Kobert Hunt, p. 50, 1849. f Herbert Spencer. — Westminster Reviev:, April, 1852, p. 472. 2 14 TESTIMONY OF LANGUAGE. whole of the world ; — an action and re-action which would be impossible, were not all pervaded by a single principle of Life."* Strictly speaking, every atom of the constituent matter of our globe is alive. "Inanimate matter," "dead matter," often vaguely spoken of, matter waiting for the breath of Deitj^ to give it life, exists only in fable. Matter is not a hearth existing anteriorly to life, and independently of life, and upon which the flame of life is sometime kindled. In its very simplest and crudest forms it is a sign that the flame is already burning. The language of poetry, or rather of the poetic sentiment, — the golden key to the essential mean- ings of words, and the teacher of their right applications, has from ages immemorial shown that life is no mere term of physiology ; and Scripture, which is the sum and immortal bloom of all poetry, pronounces, in its usages, a divine con- firmation. In the force and multiplicity of its figurative applications, no word takes precedence of Life, — a fact which mere accident or conformity to other men's example would be quite insufficient to account for; the reason is that what we ordinarily call "Life," namely, organic, physiolo- gical life, is the exponent and explanatory phase of a prin- ciple felt to be omnipresent, manifold in expression, but uniform in entity. The profound, unerring perceptions of the harmonies of nature, which were the original archi- tects, and are the conservators and trustees of language, acknowledged no private property in words; and though conventionalism and contraction of vicAV may seek to enslave particular terms. Life among the number, ever and ever do those perceptions free them from their bonds, and pass them on to their rightful inheritances. Hence it is that on the * "The Kingdom of ISTature: their Life and Affinity," by Dr. C- Ct. Cams. Translated from the German, in Taylor's Scientific Me- moirs, vol. i., p. 223. 1837. LIFE VARIOUSLY MANIFESTED. 15 lips of tlie poet; — that is, on the lips of every man who is in closer alliance with God, and Truth, and Nature than are the multitude; — words which with the vulgus have but one solitary, narrowed meaning, are continually found serving- varied and brilliant purposes, which Taste appreciates and relishes delightedly. Strange and unnatural as its phrases may sound to the unreflective mind, figurative language, rightly so called, is Nature's high-priest of Truth. " Rightly so called," because metaphors and similes founded upon mere arbitrary or far-fetched comparisons, though often confounded with figurative language, are generally but its mockery and caricature. True figurative language is an echo of the divine, immortal harmonies of nature, thus their faithfiil expositor, the vestibule of Philosophy, and an epi- tome of the highest science of the universe. 3. When it is popularly said, then, that one thing is ani- mate, and another inanimate ; that life is present here, but absent there; the simple fact of the matter is that a particu- lar manifestation of life is absent or present. Such phrases come of confounding Expression, which is variable, with Principle, which is uniform. A particular presentation of life is contemplated, and thus not only is the principle itself misconceived, but everything which does not conform to the assumed impersonation of it is pronounced contrary to that which in reality has no contraries. Just as with popular notions of what constitutes Religion, which it is impossible rightly to apprehend and define, so long as it is confounded with the forms of faith, and the modes and attitudes of wor- ship, by which it is locally sought to be realized. It is a mere assumption, for instance, that life is present only where thei*e are physical growth, feeding, motion, sensation, repro- duction, &c. Life confines itself to no such scanty costume ; and as if it would rebuke the penuriousness of a doctrine which so limits and degrades it, often forbears from all the 16 FUNGI AND SPONGES. more striking phenomena of the series, in the very depart- ments of nature of which they are asserted to be characteris- tic ; and expresses itself so slenderly, that science needs all its eyes and analogies to discern it. In the ftingi, for example, and in the sponge, both of which forms of being, by reason of their attenuated presentation of life, have been regarded in time past as belonging to inorganic nature. Fungi have been thought to be the extinguished relics or corpses of the beautiful meteors called " falling stars ;" sponges have been deemed mere concretions of the foam of the sea. " There is found," says old Gerarde, " upon the rocks neare vnto the sea, a certaine matter wrought together of the fome or froth of the sea, which we call spuuges." It is proper to remark, however, that by Aristotle, the father of natural history, the animal constitution of sponges was at all events anticipated.* So Avith the beautiful frondose zoophytes called Sertularia, Thuiaria, Plumularia, Flustra, &c.f So late as a century ago, the mineralogists disputed the zoological and botanical claims to the possession of these beautiful organisms, con- tending that they Avere " formed by the sediment and agglu- tination of a submarine, general compost of calcareous and argillaceous materials, moulded into the figures of trees and * For a long and eminently interesting account of the opinions and discoveries of the nature of Sponges, and of their situation and rank in the scale of organized being, see the admirable " History of British Sponges and Lithophytes," by the late lamented Dr. George Johnson, the Gilbert White of the sea. f Though these names may not be familiar, the objects they designate are known to all Avho have interested themselves in the curiosities and wonders of the shore. Resembling sea-weeds in their general aspect and configuration, and commonly confounded with them, they are, nevertheless, readily distinguishable by their semi-crystalline texture, and whitish brown color ; the prevailing colors of true sea-weeds being pink, green, or dark olive. THE IDEA OF LIFE A PROGRESSIVE ONE. 17 mosses by the motion of the waves ; by crystallization (as in salts), or by some imagined vegetative power in brute matter. Ray himself seems not to have made up his mind about them, for though in some of his writings he indicates a correct apprehension of their nature, in the " Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of Creation," he includes them among " inanimate, mixed bodies," or " stones, metals, mine- rals, and salts." " Some," says he, " have a kind of vegeta- tion and resemblance of plants, as Corals, Fori, and Fun- gites, which grow uidou the rocks like shrubs." The fact is, the notions of life and of what lives, as of the Avhole, genuine, truth in any matter, are things essentially of growth, and modification for the better. The popular notion of life is not a censurable one. It necessarily precedes ; the error be- ing to remain in it after it has been shoAvn to be only jjart of a truth. Partial truths everywhere form the beginnings of knoAvledge. In science, in philosophy, in theology, it is neither so much nor so often that positively /a&e doctrines are held, as defective ones. The difference between the intellec- tual conditions of childhood and maturity, and thus between their counterparts, the uncultivated and the cultivated mind, consists, mainly, in the ability to discriminate between what is less true and what is more completely true. Unfortunately, we are all of us too prone to rest content with our little glimpses, and to deem them the absolute total. Tell the dull-witted, uninformed man that the gray, leatherlike fun- gus upon the old paling lives as veritably as he himself does, and he will laugh at you. To him, eating, drinking, and movement from place to place alone indicate life. You may get his assent perhaps to the proposition that the beau- tiful tree swaymg its branches there, is alive ; but to make the same demand on behalf of the lichens, is to quench all his belief in your sincerity, if not in your sanity. To the perception of this higher theorem he must progress, as his 18 LIFE DOES NOT IMPLY VOLITION, teacher did before him, and as that teacher also himself fu]-- ther progresses, when not shackled by a mistaken deference, to the perception of a sustaining life even in inorganic things. 'No estimate of facts in nature can be regarded as just, consistent, and complete, which confines itself to a fixed circumference, calling everything beyond, barbarian. In his sphere, the philosopher who sees life only in organic things, is no more advanced than the rustic and the child, who allow it only to animals. 4. It needs very little observation of nature to perceive that life does not necessarily imply consciousness or feeling. If it did, the whole vegetable creation would be lifeless, to- gether with many animal structures of humble kind, as the sponge and allied beings. So with the mere circumstances, separately taken, of volitional movement, feeding and growth. As regards movement, for instance, no observa- tion or experiment has rendered it even probable that plants ever move volitionally, and the same may be said of the humble animal organisms just alluded to. This might be presupposed, indeed, from the utter absence from plants and the sponge, of consciousness and sensation, seeing that with- out these there can be no volition, and therefore no impulse to move. The fascinatingly curious examples of movement furnished in the different kinds of Sensitive-plant,* may * There are many kinds of sensitive-plant besides the species commonly so called, though nearly all are comprised in the great family of plants called Leguminosce. The veritable Mimosa sensitiva is a very different thing from the beautiful little Mimosa pudica, the species ordinarily known as the sensitive-plant. The other exam- ples of sensitiveness occur in different species of Oxalidece, a family of which our English wood-sorrel is the type ; and in the extraordi- nary plants known as the fly-catchers, comprehended in the family of Droseracece, the most remarkable being the North American Venus' fly-trap, or 3ionrea muscipida. PHENOMENA OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 19 seem to be exceptional, but the whole of these are referable to causes which involve no degree whatever of volition. The most curious of all, namely, the play of the leaflets of the Moving-plant,* may be compared with such movements in the animal body as that of the heart, which is constantly pulsating, yet quite independently of the will, and even out of its control Exceptions may also seem to occur in the closing and opening of m.any kinds of flowers, commonly called their sleep and their waking ; also in the folding and re-expansion of the leaves, and in the adva^nce of the sta- mens of certain flowers toward-S the pistil. For all of these, however, there is adequate explanation. Causes exciting from without, manifestly elicit the chief part of the respec- tive movements ; while others are purely mechanical. Nothing is easier to perceive, for instance, than that the leap of the stamens of the Kalmia from their niches in the corolla, comes of the wider expansion of the flower, which unfixes the anthers, and thus causes the filaments to ex- change their constrained curvature for the straightness of freedom.f The only other kind of vegetable movement ap- parently volitional, is that of the minute aquatics called, from the nature of their motion, Oscillatoria. Carpenter compares this to the ciliary movement in animals, which is '•^ The Moving-plant, or Desmodiuvi gyrans, is a native of Bengal, and one of the family of the Leguminosse above mentioned. Its leaves are somewhat like those of the clover, and the leaflets, under given circumstances, keep moving up and down. An excellent colored drawing of it may be seen in the " Icones Plantarum Eario- rum" of Jacquin, vol. iii., tab. 565. Similar movements take place in the Desmodiwn gyroides and D. vespertilionis. f For particulars of various plant-movements of this nature, see Balfour's "Class-Book of Botany," pp. 492-500; and on the subject of plant motion in general, Carpenter's "Principles of General and Comparative Physiology," chap. xv. 20 PHYSIOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. SO independent of volition as often to continue after the organism itself is dead.* 5. That the mere act of feeding is not an indispensable testimony to the presence of life, is shown in deciduous trees, or those which cast their foliage in the autumn, and hyber- nate till sj)ring, seeing that without the presence of leaves, no true vegetable nutrition can proceed. Insects, while in the chrysalis form, exemplify the same thing, as do all kinds of hybernating animals. So with the phenomenon of grow- ing. That this is not needed in order to betoken life, is illus- trated in every egg before it is placed under the hen, and in every seed before put into the soil. Contemplating " latent life," as the physiologists call it, or that which supports the egg and the seed prior to hatching and germination, we dis- cover in fact, that behind the scenes there is, if possible, even more life than in front. Millions of beings enjoy complete * For descriptions and colored drawings of the Oscillatoria, see the "British Fresh- water Algse" of Hassall, (1849), wherein is shown reason also for supposing the motion of these plants to have been " misunderstood and exaggerated to such an extent as to have sur- rounded them with an unnecessary degree of mystery. "Ciliary motion" is that of the cilia, in animalcules the principal organs of locomotion and of obtaining food ; but best to be under- stood, perhaps, from what these organs and their movements are in our own bodies. The human cilia are minute, transparent hairs, ranging from l-oOOth to l-5000th of an inch in length, and covering various interior surfaces, with which water, or other more or less fluid matters are commonly in contact. They abound about the eyes and ears, and cover the whole extent of the respiratory mucous tract. Their office is to assist in propelling onwards, and usually outwards, the fluid matters brought into contact with them ; and they do this either by constantly waving backwards and forwards, or by whirling round on their bases, so that the extremities describe circles — the ixitural result being a continuous current in a determinate direction. The waving and whirling are the " ciliary movement." LATENT LIFE — VITALITY OF SEEDS. 21 and active life ; tens of millions lie potentially alive, crowd- ing with intense vitality the very places which to appearance seem most empty. When excavations are made in the ground, the earth brought to the surface speedily becomes covered with plants, the seeds of which, as they could not possibly have been conveyed there at the moment, must have been lying in the soil, accidentally buried at some re- mote period, too deep to be acted upon by the rain and air. This is rendered the more indisputable by the curious fact that plants of different species from those common in the neighborhood, not infrequently spring up among the others. Ploughing deeper than usual will occasion similar resurrec- tions, and the same when the surface soil of old gardens is pared off. Often has there shone a lovely and unexpected renewal of choice blossoms on removing the turf under the walls of old, gray castles and abbeys, which for ages, ivy and the faithful wall-fiower alone have solaced.* The water contains similar stores, holding in suspension myriads of germs of algae, ready to grow as soon as they meet with a * For remarkable instances of the tenacity of life in seeds, espe- cially when buried, see Jesse's "Gleanings in Natural History," vol. i., p. 138, and ii., p. 135 ; Hooker's " Companion to the Botanical Magazine," vol. ii., p. 293; Loudon's "Magazine of Natural His- tory," iii. 418 ; viii. 393 ; x. 447, &c. The well-known story of the grains of wheat taken from the hand of the Egyptian mummy, germinating after thirty centuries' capti- vity, though doubted by many, Schleiden at least is a believer in. " How long," says he, " the vital power may slumber in the seed, is shown by the fact that the late Count Von Sternberg raised healthy plants of wheat from grains which were found in a mummy case (which, therefore, must have reposed for three thousand years), and laid them before the Assembly of Naturalists at Freyburg. This experiment has also been made in England." ("The Plant," p. 71.) Eggs have been found in a perfect state no less than three hundred years old. »See "Gardeners' Chronicle," August 20th, 18i3, p. 54. 22 INVISIBLE FLOATING SEEDS. suitable resting-place. "Before we have ke]Dt our Aquarium a fortnight," says Mr. Gosse, " its transparent sides begin to be dimmed, and a green scurf is seen covering them from the bottom to the water's surface. Examined with a lens, we find this substance to be composed of myriads of tiny plants, some consisting of a single row of cells of a light green hue, forming minute threads which increase in length at their extremity, and become Confervas ; Avhile others dis- play small, irregularly puckered leaves of deeper green, and develope into Ulv^ and Enteromorphse." Even the atmos- phere is charged with seeds — those minute bodies produced in such amazing numbers by the aerial cryptogamia, and which indicate their presence, like the algse in the water, the instant that circumstances enable them to vegetate. Where- ever vegetable mildew makes its appearance, it is owing to the germination of these invisible floating seeds, the vital energy of which, lying in abeyance only till a fitting sphere of acting shall be offered, is one of the most wonderful things in nature. The genera most largely represented are Penicil- liura, Oidium, Chsetomium, Sporodyce, &c.* Not only do the seeds of these and other microscopic fungi, along with those of mosses and lichens, thus float in the atmosphere, waiting their opportunity to grow ; there can be little doubt that associated with them are myriads of germs of animal- cules, especially Rotifera, which find a suitable nidus in water containing organic matter in a state of decomposition, one kind following another, according to the stage to which the decomj)osition has proceeded, but which remain inactive until such a nidus is afforded. It is not improbable that the glittering motes seen in the sunbeam when it shines through a small aperture into a dark room, consist in part, of these * Mildew does not always consist of minute vegetable growth. Sometimes, perhaps usually, in woven fabrics, it is referable to an action purely chemical. LIFE OF THE WORLD. 23 otherwise imperceptible eggs and seeds. Light, we well know, is the great and universal Revelator. Give light enough, and it is impossible to imagine Avhat might not brighten into human view. The difficulty in microscopies is not so much in obtaining lenses of increased magnifying power, as in obtaining an adequate amount of light. It may be- added that as life does not necessarily imply voli- tional movement, feeding, sensation, &c., so neither is any one of the instruments through which life is manifested, universally present. No one instrument in particular can be deemed therefore, as essential to life, or as absolutely characteristic and mdicative of life. 6. That life does not necessarily imply organization or re- production, is shoAvn in what may without impropriety be called the Life of the World. Doubtless, there is an impas- sable chasm between the mineral and the vegetable, as be- tween the vegetable and the animal, and between the animal and man. But this inorganic nature, which is represented as "dead," because it has not the same life with the animal /- or plant, is it then, to quote Guyot, destitute of all life ? " It has all the sights of life, we cannot but confess. Has it not motion in the water which streams and murmurs on the sur- face of the continents, and which tosses in the waves of the sea ? Has it not sympathies and antipathies in those myste- rious elective affinities of the molecules of matter which chemistry investigates ? Has it not the powerful attractions of bodies to each other which govern the motions of the stars scattered in the immensity of space, and keep them in an admirable harmony ? Do we not see, and always with a secret astonishment, the magnetic needle agitated at the approach of a particle of iron, and leaping under the fire of the Northern Light? Place any material body whatever by the side of another, do they not immediately enter into re- lations of interchange, of molecular attraction, of electnciry. 24 LIFE OF THE SOUL. of magnetism ? In the inorganic part of matter, as in the organic all is acting, all is promoting change, all is itself undergoing transformation. And thus, though this life of the globe, this physiology of our planet, is not the life of the tree or the bird, is it not also a life? Assuredly it is. We cannot refuse so to call those lively actions and reactions, that perpetual play of the forces of matter, of which we are every day the witnesses. The thousand voices of nature which make themselves heard around us, and in so many ways betoken incessant and prodigious activity, proclaim it so loudly that we cannot shut our ears to their language." Equally, too, may we recognize life as the central, governing force of everything comprehended under the names of Intel- lect and Will. The particular phenomena of animal and plant life may not be present, but they are replaced by phe- nomena no less truly vital. Indeed the life of the soul, or that which is played forth as the activity of the intellect and the affections, is the highest expression of all. Com- pared with this life, the life of animals and plants, and the life of the globe, are but mimicries and shadows. 7. It is this full, generic significance of the word life, which we propose to recognize and illustrate in the following pages; physiological life taking its place, not as life abso- lutely and exclusively, but as one manifestation among many. The doctrine which it involves is no mere hypothesis of the fancy. It is dictated by nature ; it commends itself to com- mon sense, to do Avhich is the chief glory of all that belongs to imcommon sense; it is eminently practical; it is promo- tive, in fact, of the highest aims of science and philosophy, metaphysical no less than physical. Here is the great cer- tificate of its soundness. For while the ultimate characte- ristic and test of every true doctrine concerning nature is that no phenomenon in the universe is absolutely beyond the range of its powers of interpretation, the immediate and VALUE OF OUR DOCTRINE OF LIFE. 25 proximate test lies in its capacity to illuminate every path of human inquiry, whithersoever it may lead. Such a doctrine has not only a local value and application, but is, directly or indirectly, a clue to the whole mystery of creation. Other doctrines may help more largely in particular provinces, but no doctrine is so generally efficacious as this grand and com- prehensive one of the omnipresence and the unity of life. Life it is which gives to the universe all its reality as well as ^lendor, so that the larger our conception of life, the more nearly do we approach both to a just appreciation of the magnificence of nature, and to the solution of her stupen- dous problems. Not the least of the advantages accessary to the doctrine here set forth, is that the physiologist Avho adopts it, instead of entering on his inquiries with the sense of a great, unnatural gap between physiology and physics, finds the latter not only adjoined, but an instructive introduction. He ascends, as all rational philosophy advises, from the sim- ple to the complex. Coleridge clearly exhibits this in his "Theory of Life," above cited; Dr. Radcliffe well exemplifies it in his " Proteus, or the Law of Nature." "As an earnest," he observes, " of the rich harvest which is to come when the current separation of physiology from physics shall be for- gotten, several phenomena which were once deemed peculiar to living bodies are now explained by ordinary physical in- fluences." Looked at through a single science. Life is unin- telligible ; for the sciences, separately taken, are but like the constituent portions of a telescope, we can only see properly by connecting them. Physiology, for the same reason, be- comes a pathway and preface to psychology, which inquired into without reference to physiology, as its material represen- tative, is but an intellectual ignis fatuus. Every true law in metaphysics has a law corresponding to it in physical nature, and the latter is often the surest clue whereby to iind it. 3 B CHAPTER II. THE SOTTMCE OF LIFE, AND THE JtATJONALE OF EIFE. 8. Life is no part of God's tvorks, no created and there- fore finite substance ; neither is it in any case detached from him, or independent of him. As the rivers move along their courses only as they are renewed from perennial springs, welling up where no eye can reach, so is it with life. Genuine philosophy knows of no life in the universe but what is momentarily sustained by connection with its source, with Him Avho " alone hath life in himself." The popular notion, which sees an image of it rather in the reservoir of water, filled in the first place from the spring, but afterwards cut off", and holding an independent exist- ence, is countenanced neither by science nor revelation. How can independent vitality pertain even to the most insignificant of created forms, Avhen it is said so expressly that " in Him all things live, and move, and have their being?" Even man has no life of his oivn, though of nothing are peoj)le more fully persuaded than that they live by virtue of an inborn vital energy, to maintain which, it needs only that they shall feed and sleep. Not that men deny the general proposition that life is from God, and in the hands of God. Every one is willing to allow that he received his life originally from the Almighty, and that the Almighty takes it away from him when he pleases. Few, however, are willing to regard themselves as existing only by virtue of his constant influx, which, nevertheless, is the 26 THE ESSENCE OF LIFE UNDISCOVERABLE. 27 only way in which it can be true that " in Him we live, and move, and have our being." It is wounding to self-love and to the pride of human nature, to think of ourselves as so wholly and minutely dependent as we are, moment by moment, day and night, the senses all the while insinuating the reverse. Moreover, in the minds of most men there is a strong aversion to recognize physical effects as resulting from spiritual causes. Towards everything, indeed, which involves a spiritual element — which lifts us above the region of the senses, there is a deep-seated dislike, such as mere argument is perhaps incapable of overcoming, and which can only give way, it would seem, under the influence of higher moral feelings. Truly to understand anything of God's government and providence, we must first of all be faithful to his revealed law. We can form no right esti- mate, either of nature or of life, till we strive, with his divine blessing, to become in ourselves more truly human. 9. Uncreate and infinite, it follows that of the precise nature of this grand, all-sustaining principle, this Life as we call it, man must be content to remain forever unin- formed. Man can obtain knowledge only of finite and created things. No philosophy will ever be able to explain life, seeing that to " exj^lain" is to consider a phenomenon in the clearness of a superior light, and that life is itself and already the highest light. However it may be mani- fested, to man life can never be anything hut life. This is no misfortune ; perhaps it is an advantage. It is imjDOSsible to become either good or wise unless we can make ourselves contented to remain ignorant of many things ; and the grander the knowledges we must learn cheerfully to forego, the more useful is the discipline. As there is " a time to get and a time to lose," so is there a time to seek and a time to refrain from seeking. The hypothesis of a "vital force," by which some have sought to account for life, does no more 28 NATURAL LAWS. than jjLish the difficulty a little further back, since the ques- tion immediately arises, What is the "vital force," and whence derived ? Whether we contemplate it in inorganic nature, or in organic, and by whatever name we may choose to designate it, force is nowhere innate, nor is it originally produced or producible by any combinations or conditions of matter, visible or invisible. Everywhere in the consider- ation of force, we are told of a power within and underlying that which we are contemplatmg. Nowhere do we find the poAver itself, but only the continent of the power ; perhaps merely the sensible effect by which its presence is indicated. No force, in a word, in the whole range of material nature, is initial. The utmost point to which science can convey us, even when dealing with the most occult and recondite phe- nomena — those of electricity for example — never shows where force begins. There is always a still anterior force, which cannot be found except by the light of Theology. In philosoiDhy, as in trouble and in death, willing or unwilling, we must go to God at last. 10. Others refer life to the "laws of nature." This, within certain limits, is perfectly proper. Life, in all its varied phases and manifestations, does come, most assuredly, of the " laws of nature." The error is to remain in the laws of nature, and deem that life comes of these only. Laws of nature, in themselves, have no more efficacy than "vital force," and have as little independent existence. "In all ages of the world," says Hitchcock, "where men have been enlightened enough to reason upon the causes of phenomena, a mysterious and a mighty power has been imputed to the laws of nature. A large portion of the most enlightened men have felt as if these laws not only explain, but possess an inherent poAver to continue, the ordinary operations of nature. But what is a natural law without the presence and energizing power of the \'a,v^giver f Who can show how GOD ALONE IS LIFE. 29 a law operates except through the influence of the lawgiver? How unphilosophical, then, to separate a law of nature from the Deity, and to imagine him to have withdrawn from his works ! To do this would be to annihilate the law. He must be present every moment, and direct every movement of the universe, as really as the mind of man must be in his body in order to produce movement there. The law hypothesis supposes law caj)able of doing what only Infinite wisdom and power can do. And what is this but ascribing infinite perfection to law, and making a Deity of' the laws which he ordains ?"* Law of itself could not cause or maintain the existence of a single thing, though it was ac- cording to law all things were created, and though it is by the same primitive, immutable laws, that all phenomena, both material and spiritual, are effectuated. It is the life underlying the laAV which causes and sustains. The law is merely the mode of the pu.tting forth of that life ; the rule of its action ; the definite method in which the internal. Di- vine, dynamic principle is projected. Nature has no inde- pendent activity, no causality of its own. God is the only independent existence, and he is the cause of all causes. He alone hath life in himself Proximately, the universe, and all that it contains, is ^ato-governed : but it is at the same time fundamentally and essentially (roc^-governed. Animals and plants, in their vital processes, the external world and all its changes, alike declare a Divine beginning. God it is who displays the manifold lovely phenomena which render the earth, the air, the sea, and their vicissitudes, pictures so vivid of human experience. The tossing of the white-crested waves; the gliding of the clouds before the wind ; the daily illumination, and the morning and evening painting of the sky ; the glitter of the stars ; the rainbow, ■"■ Religion of Geology. Lecture ix. 3« 30 THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS OF MATTER. these, and all other such things, come of the watchful and benevolent activity of our living Father in the heavens, who is never a mere spectator, much less an indifferent one, either in terrestrial or m spiritual things ; still are they in no case exercises of mere lawless fiat. 11. The very existence of the earth as a planetary mass depends, but in a proximate sense, on the "laws of nature." The same is true of the various materials wliich compose it; water, for example, formed under the influence of the natural law which science calls "chemical affinity." Let the affinity be annulled, — in other words, let the Divine life cease to act upon the constituent oxygen and hydrogen, no longer im- pelling them to combine, — and every drop would instantly decompose and disappear. Under a similar withdrawal of sustaining energy, every solid and fluid of nature, even the solids we call simple and primitive, would depart; massive and impregnable as it seems, the Avhole of this great globe would dissolve into thin air and vanish. For just as water is resolvable into oxygen and hydrogen, so are these latter, along with the solid elements, the metals, phosphorus, iodine, &c., resolvable into yet finer elements, into which, unless supported by the Divine life, they Avould similarly decompose. The actually primitive elements of our earth, instead of fifty-five or fifty-six, are probably only two. The tendency, without doubt, if we look only at one dejDartment of chemical inquiry, seems of late to have been towards an increase of the number rather than to a diminution; the l^rofounder investigations of natural philosophers dispose them, however, more strongly every day, to refer back the whole to a simple flagrant or inflammable body, and a pure conflagrant body, or supporter of fire; in other words, to an active substance and a passive. The analj'-sis of one will lead to the reduction of all the rest, and establish the true jyrincipia whereby the science of chemistry will be consum- RELATION OF THE WORLD TO GOD, 31 mated. Science, be it remembered, has never made a single step except in the wake of imagination ; the practical ideas of one age have all been begotten of the impractical of a former ; the morning star of all philosophy is poetr}- . Gold, silver, oxygen, &c., probably come each one of them of a special play of afhnity between the molecules of the two primitives, having a corollary in the resulting products of absolute and relative ductility, elasticity, &c., such as causes gold to be where we find gold, silver where we find silver, as accurately and inevitably as the afiinities which take place between the atoms of gold, silver, oxygen, &c., give origin, in turn, to oxides, acids, earths, alkalies. Whether there be any yet earlier conditions of matter than these two can only be reasoned upon from analogy. It is not within the ability of man to compass with actual knowledge either the maxi- mum naturcB or the minimum. 12. Though the Divine, by means of his life, be thus the basis of all nature, even its minutest atom, we are not to confound him with nature; — this would be even worse than the ascription of everything to "Law." Superfluous as it may seem after the distinct references that have been made, it is well, perhaps, that upon this great and sacred point we should have, before going any further, a full and explicit understanding. The ancients described the world as a huge animal, vitalized by an impersonal (['o-^^-rj y.oajioo, or anima vnmdi. Even in modern times we have seen it taught that — " All are but parts of one stupendous whole. Whose body nature is, and God the soul." Commonly termed "Pantheism," this is, properly speaking. Atheism. Pantheism, rightly so called, is the doctrine which sinks nature in God. "This was the pantheism of the famous Spinoza, which some peojDle have been so foolish as to call atheism. Spinoza was so absorbed in the idea of God, that 32 GOD AND NATURE DISTINCT. lie could see nothing else." Pantheism is the most unreason- able of doctrines; atheism the most mean and gross. God is God, and nature is nature. Intimately connected with each other, yet are they absolutely distinct. Nature is an utterance of the divine mind, clothed in material configura- tions and phenomena, — flowing from it as words from the underlying thought, or the deeds of friendship from its sen- timent; God himself reigns apart from it, in the heavens. No true conception of nature can be attained, any more than a true doctrine of the grounds and uses of religion, till this great truth of the separateness, and therefore the personality of God, be acknowledged and felt. For even to think only of wisdom, power, omnipresence, &c., is not to think of God; it is but to think of a mere catalogue of abstractions; the terms are meaningless till impersonated, till we connect them, in short, with Him who said, — "He who hath seen me hath seen the Father,"- — "the man Christ Jesus, who is over all, God blessed forever." It is the im- mediate consciousness of a supreme and eternal unity, as Carus finely remarks, which enables us to distinguish the just, the true, and the beautiful; so that demonstrations of true science exist, in fact, only for those who set out with the idea of God in Christ as the beginning; studying nature from him rather than toivards him. It is good to "look from Nature up to Nature's God," but it is better and best to look at nature from its framer and sustainer. There would be no falling into pantheism, no forgetting the Creator in the creature, were this always made the starting-point in the survey. The humanity of Christ is the true beginning of all wisdom and philosophy, no less than the immediate avenue to redemption. Not that the idea of God can be entertained irrespectively of nature; each idea is needful to the apprehension of the other. "He," says Franz Von Baader, "who seeks in nature, nature onlv, and not reason; CREATION FOREVER IN PROGRESS. 33 he who seeks in the latter, reason only, and not God ; and he who seeks reason out of or apart from God, or God out of or apart from reason, will find neither nature, reason, iior God, but Avill assuredly lose them all three." 13. In the "laws of nature," accordingly, we have not " blind, unintellectual fatalities," but expressions of Divine volitions. They appear to us independent and sufficient, because God never discloses himself directly — only through some medium. The world is full of apparent truths ; they enter largely into our very commonest experiences ; a stick immersed in water appears to be broken ; the banks of a river seem to move as we sail past ; the coast seems to re- cede from the departing ship ; a burning coal swung quickly round seems a ring of fire. So with the "laws of nature." To the eye of the senses they are one thing ; to the eye of true philosophy quite another. Seeming to accomplish all, in reality they accomplish nothing. Oersted never wrote a finer truth than that " the conception of the universe is in- complete, if not comprehended as a constant and continuous work of the eternally-creating Spirit;" nor Emerson, in re- lation to the same fact, that " it takes as much life to con- serve as to created Because of these great verities is it that to study the laws of nature is in reality to study the modes of God's action ; that science is simply " a history of the Divine operations in matter and mind;" that the world, with all its antiquity, is every moment a new creation, the song of the morning stars unsuspended and unsuspendable to the ear that will listen for it, a virgin to every fresh wooer of the Beautiful and the True. 14. How close does it bring the Creator to us thus to re- gard him not so much as having made the world, as still engaged in making it; i. e., by supplying the life on which its laws, and thus its being and incidents, depend. It is an ill-constructed theology which regards God as having created B - 34 LiFE BEGINS IN ACTION AND REACTION. only in past ages. A gorgeous sunset, the leafing of a tree in the sweet spring-time, betokens the Divine hand no less palpably than did the miracles which provided the hungry multitudes of Galilee Avith food. " Depend upon it," says an eloquent preacher, " depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to joerceive such as are alloAved us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that where- ever God's hand is, there is miracle, and it is simply an un- devoutness which imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of God. The customs of heaven ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its anomalies ; the dear old ways of which the Almighty is never tired, than the strange things which he does not love well enough to re- peat. He who will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting finger of the Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with wdiich Adam gazed on the first dawn in Paradise ; and if we cannot find him there, if we cannot find him on the margin of the sea, or in the flowers by the way-side, I do not think we should have discovered him any more on the grass of Geth- semane or Olivet." 15. Uncreate and mfinite, it follows, in addition to conse- quences specified, that Life as to its essence is no subject for scientific consideration. All that science can do is to investi- gate the circumstances under which it is manifested, and the eifects which it produces. Carefully studying these, and along with them, the processes of life, we may learn, how- ever, the rationale of its action, next to the nature of life, the grandest fact in its philosophy, and the centre and foun- dation of all true and great ideas of life ; therefore a benign and animating compensation. Narrowly looked at, under- lying every phenomenon of the material world, and under- lying every psychological occurrence, there is found a fixed, UNIVEESAL DUALISM OF NATURE. 35 causative relation of Two things, or Two principles, as the case may be, different and unequal, yet of such a difference, and such an inequality, that like man and woman, who con- stitute the type and interpretation of the whole of nature, both visible and invisible, each is the complement of the other ; one being gifted with energy to act, the other with equal energy and aptitude to resict. All phenomena, alike of matter and of mind, resolve into this dual virtus. Whether physical or spiritual, animal or vegetable. Life always pre- sents itself as communicated through this one simple for- mula, the reciprocal action and reaction of complevientaries. Where there are greatest variety and complexity of action and reaction, all the results converging at the same time, to one great end, as in plants, animals, and man, the presenta- tions are the grandest ; where there is least of such variety, and no such immediate reference, as in the phenomena of inorganic chemistry, there the presentations are the humblest. The great cosmic phenomena induced by Gravitation, Elec- tricity, &c., comprising everything studied by the astronomer, the meteorologist, and the electrician, form no exception. Binary causes lie at the base of all. The sun and moon cast their light upon us ; the rain falls and the waves roll ; the spheres preserve their rotundity, and persevere in their motions, all as the result of underlying dual forces. The Fabric of nature, like its phenomena, resolves, everywhere, into dualities. Land and water, male and female, the straight line and the curve, do but express prominently, a universal principle. The Elements, we have already seen, are probably, only Two. 16. The ground of this wonderful, all-pervading dualism, and concurrent action and reaction, producing the magnifi- cent results we call Nature and Life, lies in the very nature of God himself, who is not so much the ingenious deviser and designer, displa.ying in the world the contrivances of 36 PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THIS DUALISM. Skill, as its Archetype aud Exemplar. That is to say, the world is what we find it, not so much because he willed it to be so, arbitrarily, as . because of his containing, in his own nature, the first lorinciples of its whole fabric and economy. It pictures in finites, Avhat he is in infinites. Infinite Wis- dom and Infinite Goodness, or Love, as we have seen in another place,* are shown both by natural and revealed theology, to be the all-comprehending essentials of the Di- vine ; omnipotence, omniscience, justice, mercy, and every other attribute, inhering in, and manifesting and fulfilling these tAvo. In these two principles all things have their be- ginning ; in all things therefore are they embodied and re- presented. Wherever there is life, the Divine Wisdom and Goodness are consentaneously and fundamentally declared. In one we may fancy the Divine Art shows most conspicu- ous, in another the Divine Power ; but the true seeing finds these no more than outer circles, enclosing Love and Wis- dom as the inmost. In that admirable adaptation and aptitude of things to act and react, and thus to enter into a relation of which marriage is the highest exponent, consists, accordingly, the whole principle of living action. There is no other source of phenomena, either in the animated or the inanimate Avorld, and Avherever it brings things and natures into contact, reciprocally adapted each to the other, life im- mediately appears, beautiful and exuberant. God made things complementary on purpose that they should unite, and open channels wherein his life should have new outlet ; until conjoined, and they have opened such new channels, they are everyAvhere restless and erratic; everyAvhere in earth and heaven, equilibrium comes of Avell assorted mar- riage, or union of complementaries, and there is no equili- * " Sexuality of Nature," wherein the whole subject of the dualities and reciprocal principles of nature is exhibited and illustrated LIFE REPRESENTED IN MARRIAGE. 37 brium independent of it. Nothing, moreover, so surely brings disorder and unhappiness, as interference with natu- ral affinities, and neglecting to be guided by them. Using the word in the high and holy sense which alone properly attaches to it, i. e., as signifying the conjunction of princi- ples and affections, and only in a secondary and derivative sense, the conjunction of persons — the union 'of the proto- typal, all-creative Wisdom and Goodness in the Divine, is itself a marriage ; so that Life might not inappropriately be described as the playing forth of the principle of which cor- poreal marriage is the last effect. The development of a new living creature, that is, of a new incarnation of life, Avhen there is externalized love between man and woman (who in matrimony rightfully so called, constitute the finite picture and counterpart of the Almighty), is the very sym- bol and emblem of the development of life. What the babe is to its parents, such is life, as to its presentation in phenomena, to the action and reaction of the two things or two natures underlying it. CHAPTER ill THE VAItlETIES OF LIFE— ORGANIC LIFE- STIMUIfl." ■ THE <' VITAL 17. Primarily, the manifestation of life is twofold, phy- sical and spiritual. Physical life is life as expressed in the constituents of the material or external world, giving exist- ence to whatever is cognizable by the senses. Spiritual life is that which gives vitality to the soul; underlying thought and feeling, animating the intellect and the affections, and sustaining all that is contained in the invisible, non-material, or spiritual world. Spiritual life, so far as it is allowed the finite mind to perceive, is expressed in only one mode: Phy- sical life is expressed in two modes, namely, as observable, (1) in the inorganic half of the material creation ; (2) in the organic half The latter, which may be called Organic or Physiological life, presents the further distinction of life as it is in animals, (including the material body, or animal half of man;) and life as it is in vegetables. Put into a tabular form, the several distinctions may be apprehended at a glance: — A. Inorganic. The expression of Life is :— 1. Physical or Natural. [B. Organic [ 2. Spiritual or Psychological. a. Vegetable. b. Apimal. Physiological. 38 LIFE COMMENSURATE WITH USE. 39 Inorganic life is the lowest expression ; Vegetable succeeds; Animal life comes next; and highest is the Spiritual. Won- derful and truly miraculous is it that a single and purely simple element should be presented under such diverse aspects, the extremes far apart as earth and heaven, though it is not without some striking illustrative imagery in objec- tive nature, where the same substance is occasionally found under widely dissimilar forms, as happens with charcoal and the diamond, both of which consist essentially of carbon. There is a grand and beautiful law, however, in the light of which the whole matter becomes intelligible; namely, that the communication of life from God is always in the exact ratio of the Use and Destiny of the recipient object in the general economy of Creation. The more princely the heritage of office, always the more beautiful and complex is the Form of the object, and commensurately with this, the more exalted is the presentation, and the more noble the operation, of the life which fills it. This is the great funda- mental principle to which are referable all diversity of structure and configuration in nature, all dissimilitude of substance and organization, and all variety in the force and amount of Life. It may be illustrated by the operation, under its various opportunities, of water, which in compo- sition and inherent capabilities, is everywhere precisely the same. In connection with machinery, which is like the complicated and elaborate structure of organized bodies, we see it either turning the huge mill-wheel by the river; or heated into steam, making a thousand wheels whirl in con- cert; and in either case promoting mightiest ends and uses. Away from machinery, and merely gliding as a stream towards the sea, it serves but to carry onwards the boat that may be launched upon it. Lying as a still lake, among the impeopled and silent mountains, its energy seems depressed into inertia, though at any moment that energy is capable 40 INORGANIC LIFE. of being played forth, in all its astounding plenitude, give it but the adequate medium. So with the Divine life in the universe. In the words of a powerful writer, " The material world, with its objects sublimely great or meanly little, as we judge them; its atoms of dust, its orbs of fire; the rock that stands by the sea-shore, the water that Avears it away; the worm, a birth of yesterday, Avhich we trample under foot; the streets of constellations that gleam perennial over- head ; the aspiring palm-tree fixed to one spot, and the lions that are sent out free; these incarnate and make visible all of God their natures will admit," that is, all of his Life they are comj^etent to receive and play forth, by virtue of their respective ofiices in the system of the world, and the forms they hold in harmony therewith. Carbon in the shape of diamond has a nobler destiny than carbon in the shape of charcoal; therefore it receives that intenser com- munication of life which is so exquisitely phenomenonized in crystallization, and the concurrent translucency and brightness. The soul has a nobler destiny than the body; therefore has it the imperial life whereby it travels whither it Avill, piercing space to its utmost bound, centrifugal as light. 18. Inorganic life, the first-named of these three great varieties or manifestations of the vitalizing principle, has been illustrated in the preceding chapters. It will sufiice to add here, that it has nothing in common with organic or physiological life, much less with the spiritual ; nothing, that is to say, except the Divine origin and sustentation. The recipient forms occupy a plane of their own, in every sense subordinate and distinct, and the phenomena which they exhibit bear not the slightest similarity to those manifested upon the superior planes, as regards any strict and essential resemblance. The generalization by which it is associated with the higher varieties, proposes to view it as that particu- THE ORGANIC EXPRESSION OF LIFE. 41 lar expression of the uiiiversal Divine energy whereby inani- mate things "have their being," just as under another ex- pression, animate things have thews, and nothing more. Ihe second variety, the Organic or Physiological expression of Life, — that which vitalizes plants and animals, and the ma- terial body of man, — is so called because of the playing forth of its phenomena through the medium of special in- struments or organs, as in animals, the limbs, the heart, the brain, &c., and in plants, the leaves, the flowers, the stamens, &c. Mineral substances, though they sometimes possess a very beautiful configuration, and even a kind of internal arrangement of parts, as seen in agates, never possess dis- tinct organic members. These pertain peculiarly to plants and animals, the sole subjects and recipients of organic life. Taking the word in its literal and most general sense, the phenomena of the Spiritual life are organic, being ^^layed forth like those of physiological life, through special instru- ments ; the very same instruments in fact. It is legitimate, nevertheless, to restrict the name to johysiological life and phenomena, seeing that the latter take precedence of the spiritual, both in extent and diffusion, and in order of mani- festation. The race of beings alone recipient of spiritual life constitutes (as regards earth) the least part of living- nature, and every member of it is animal before human. The Organic is the expression of life which, as the prime instrument of all man's temporal enjoyments, has in every age allured his intensest interest. Its facts and mysteries have com- mended themselves to his intellect as the peerage of science and philosophy, the alpha and the omega of all natural knowledge. If, says Aristotle, the knowledge of things be- coming and honorable be deservedly held in high estima- tion; and if there be any species of knowledge more exqui- site than another, either upon account of its accuracy, or of the objects to which it relates being more excellent or won- 4» t2 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. derful ; we should not hesitate to pronounce the histoiy of the ammating principle as justly entitled to hold the first rank.* With all enthusiasm and assiduity accordingly, have chemis- try, anatomy, and physiology, toiled at the splendid theme. Theories innumerable have been devised with a view to its elucidation; all however, in vain, because framed in the sunless chambers of an exclusively secular philosophy. Esteemed by some the cause of organization, by others its consequence ; imagined at different periods to be fire,f light, oxygen,! electricity,§ and galvanism, "still the exulting Eureka has not been uttered, either in the laboratory, the dissecting-room, or the schools of the savans. The enigma has continued to baffle all the propounders of solutions; — the heart of nature's mystery has not been plucked out, even by the most vigorous of the wisest of her sons." Pur- sued as a matter of purely scientific inquiry, researches into * Tbiv KoKdv Kal Tijiuov K. r. A., Tvepi ipvxris, Book i., chap. 1, the Open- ing sentence. f Among those who held this very ancient doctrine was Hippo- crates. He considered heat not only the foundation of life, but as the Divinity itself, intelligent and immortal. — AoKki is fioi S KoXio^evou Ocpfidv dddvarov re thai, Kai voziv fiavra, k. t. X. Works, SeC. iii., p. 249. Fcesius' Edit., 1621. Relics of this belief survive in the phrasea vital spark, the flame of life, &c. See for curious illustrations, Bishop Berkeley's Siris, sections 152 to 214. % As by Girtanner, Journal de Physique, &c., tome 37, p. 139. See also Bostock's Elementary System of Physiology, vol. 1, p. 209, 1824. \ This has been a very favorite hypothesis, and still meets with approval. Abernethy, for one, regarded electricity "not merely as the prime agent in sensation, but as even constituting the essence of life itself." See his "Inquiry, &c., into Hunter's Theory of Life," pp. 26, 30, 35, 80, &c., 1814. It is singular to find this intelligent writer sliding into materialism at the very time when he is directing the force of his genius against it. CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIZED BEINGS. 43 the mystery of life cannot jDOSsibly have any other termina- tion, seeing that to follow such a course is to attend merely to Effects, and to entirely disregard and disown the Cause. Look at the results of the countless strivings to contrive a descriptive name for the wily Proteus ; — vital principle, vis vitce, vital spirit, impetum faciens, spirit of animation, organic force, organic agent, vis plastica, materia vitce diffusa, &c., &c.; — what do they amount to Lcyond a tacit confession of total inability? Look at the attempts, scarcely fewer, that have been made at a definition of life. If they have not been mere substitutions of many words for one, adding nothing to our previous knowledge, they have been similarly fruitless exercises in a few. When Bichat, for instance, opens his celebrated "Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort," by defining life as "the sum of the functions by which death is resisted,"* what is it, as Coleridge well asks, but a circuitous way of saying that life consists in being able to live? As little to the purpose is Dr. Fletcher, when he says that " Life consists in the sum of the characteristic actions of organized beings, performed in virtue of a speci- fic susceptibility, acted upon by specific stimuli;" or Rich- erand, when he tells us that "Life consists in the aggregate of those phenomena which manifest themselves in succession for a limited time in organized beings." Neither of them explains anything. Even the attempt, last in point of time, and from the lesson of others' errors, presumable to be best "' "La vie est I' ensemble des fonctions qui resistent a la mort." See the remarks on this much criticized sentence in the edition of Bichat by Cerise. Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1852, p. 274. Auguste Compte, a mere bookman in such sublets, devotes a long argument in his Philosophie Positive (tome 3, p. 288,) to what he calls, with most amusing complacency, the profonde irrationalite of his great country- man. 44 DEFINITIONS OF LIFE. ill execution, — that of Herbert Spencer, who devotes the whole of the third part of his masterly Elements of Psycho- logy to the consideration of the subject, bringing up by careful and steady steps to the conclusion that "the broadest and most complete definition of life will be the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," — even this deals but, like the others, with the phenomena of life. It is no "definition," — merely a statement of certain signs of life. If we are to understand by the word " Life" simply the attestations of its presence, — the signs, and nothmg more, — these several authors have done as well, perhaps, as the subject permits. But in that case we are left precisely where we were. Life itself, the thing attested, has yet to be defined, and requires a distinct and superior name. Some "definitions" have been couched in a single word, "Assimi- lation" for example. But as in the preceding cases, what is assimilation more than a circumstance of life? Were assimi- lation life itself, we should know all about the latter so soon as we had noted the assimilating process, by means of a little chemistry, in the green duckweed of the standing pool. In no way is it more paramount than reproduction is. As well might Life be defined to be Death, seeing that death is the universal end. 19. In the phenomena just adverted to, namely, the As- similation of food internally, and Reproduction of the species in direct descent ; followed after a given period of activity, by Death, consist the grand characteristics of Or- ganized beings. However plants and animals may differ among themselves, this threefold history pertains to every species without exception. Functions, accordingly, even more decidedly than organs, distii^iiish the members of the Vegetable and Animal kingdoms from the Mineral. It is important to observe this, because in many of the humbler kinds of animals and plants, organs strictly so called, are VITAL TISSUE. 45 not developed. In the Protococcus or red-snow plant, the whole apparatus of life is concentrated into the compass of a single microscopic cell. Assimilation and Reproduction are performed there nevertheless, proving that separate and complex organs are non-essential to them. It follows that the absolute, unexceptionable diagnosis of organized bodies consists' not so much in the possession of distinct organs, as in the presence of vital tissue ; that is to say, cells filled with fluid, at all events in their younger stages, and possessing, every one of them, full powers of assimilation and repro- duction ; so that although no more than a single cell may be developed, it is still, to all intents and purposes, an or- ganized body. This latter condition is what Ave witness in the red-snow plant. The body of man is a vast mountain of cells of precisely the same intrinsic character as those of the Protococcus, only built into special members, and endued with a more powerful vitality. AVhether members be de- veloped or not, "vital tissue" is the basis of the entire organic world, as markedly as it is absent from the mineral, and forms the sedes ipsisswice of the whole of the vital pro- cesses. That they are destitute of vital tissue is the reason, accordingly, why minerals perform no fvmctions. Wanting its sensibility and expansiveness, the stone, the metal, the crystal, once formed, lie forever afterwards in perfect still- ness, until assailed, that is, by new chemical agencies from without, tending to decompose them. No alterations take place within their substance ; they neither feed, nor breathe, nor procreate ; their once active life has subsided into simple, stationary existence. With the organized body it is exactly the reverse. During the whole period of its tenure of life, it presents, more or less evidently, the phenomena of growth, and of change of form and substance, many of the most important changes recurring in definite cycles of succession. Things, in a Avord, Avhich are recipient only of the inorganic 46 ANIMAL AND VEGETATIVE FUNCTIONS. degree of life, are marked by but one phenomenon — that of the accretion of their particles into the mass ; those Avhich receive the organic degree, present an assemblage of phe- nomena, and these are both simultaneous and continuous. The active life of the mineral ceases as soon as the mineral is formed ; that of the organized body goes on unabatedly, and is even more vigorous after the completion of the form proper to it, than before. The diamond ceases from active life as soon as it becomes a diamond; whereas the corre- sponding period in the history of an animal is precisely that of its highest energy commencing. 20. Animals contrasted with plants show distinctions equally sharp, though in many points these two great classes of beings are most intimately allied. In the former, the organs, and therefore the functions are more numerous and varied, and all those now appearing for the first time, have peculiarly noble offices. Such are the eye and the ear, with their respective powers of sight and hearing. The latter kind are distinguished by physiologists as the "Animal" functions; those which are common to both classes of beings, are called the "Vegetative."* In man, for example, the Vegetative functions are feeding, digestion, respiration, &c., (all of which he has in common with the plant), their central organ being the heart, or rather the heart and lungs cooperatively; while the animal functions are those which depend upon the brain. In animals, the organs of the Vegetative functions fvre generally single, as the heart, the stomach, and the liver ; those, on the other hand, of the * Some authors call the Vegetative functions the "Organic." The former is by far the better name, being definite and strict in its application, whereas "Organic" properly denotes both classes of functions. The latter is the sense invariably intended in the present volume. ANIMAL AND VEGETATIVE FUNCTIONS. 47 Animal functions, are for the most part arranged in pairs ; that is, they are double and correspondent, as in the two eyes and two ears ; or they have two symmetrical halves, parallel with the mesian line of the body, as in the nose, the spinal marrow, and the tongue. The functions of the Vege- tative organs continue uninterruptedly; the blood, for in- stance, ig in continual circulation; those of the Animal organs are subject to interruptions. Still it is everywhere the same life, essentially, which is played forth. The higher and lower presentations come wholly of the peculiar offices, and thence of the capability of the recipient organism to disclose it. The loAvest degree of expression is in the sim- plest forms of vegetables, such as the microscopic fungi, known as moulds and mildew ; the highest is in the material body of man. BetAveen these are innumerable intermediate degrees, all referable, however, either to vegetable, or to animal life. In the Vegetable, by reason of its less noble destiny, the ojDeration of life is seen merely in the produc- tion of a determinate frame-work of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers, and the maintenance of these in a state of self- nutritive and reproductive activity. In the Animal, it pro- duces analogues of all the organs that the vegetable pos- sesses, after a more elaborate mode, and superadds to them. Nervous matter. This gives sensation, and the power of voluntary motion, and introduces the creature into social communication with the objects around it, such as to the vegetable is utterly unknown. We shall see, further on, hoAV such Avidely parted extremes are yet consistent with singleness of idea ; also, in considering Discrete degrees and the Chain of Nature, how along Avith the most beautiful serial progression and development, there is absolute separa- tion and distinctiveness, both as regards species, and the great aggregates we call the Kingdoms of nature. 21. To the support of Organic life are needed Food, Air, 48 FOOD, AIR, AND THE VITAL STIMULI. and the great dynamic substance or substances known as Heat, Light, and Electricity.* The latter are what authors call the "vital stimuli," their operation, either singly or combined, having long been recognized as the first essential to the manifestation of vital phenomena. Properly speak- ing, the whole suite should be included under the name of Food, seeing that they equally contribute to the stability of the organism. They are not merely stimuli, or excitants of vital action ; definite quantities of them must be introduced into the organism, of which they are the imponderable ali- ment, as food commonly so called, is the ponderable. This is strikingly exemplified in the history of the Cerealia, or Corn-plants, to which a long summer or a short one makes no difference, provided they receive the same aggregate amount of heat and light. Every one knows that if the supply of natural, wholesome aliment be reduced below a certain level, there is alike in plants and animals emaciation and loss of vigor ; and that if totally deprived of food, they speedily starve to death. Debarred from regular supplies of Air, Light, Electricity, &c., though the supply of food may be adequate, plants no less than animals, suffer as severely as in the former case. Respiration, the circulation of the blood, the flow of the sap, digestion, assimilation, all stand in need of their united and complementary service. Equally and as absolutely essential is it to the very genesis of the organism, whether we take the child in the womb of its mother, or its counterpart, the embryo seed in the pistil of the flower, excepting, in the former case, the immediate presence and operation of atmospheric air. We shall first * To this list ■will perhaps have to be added odyle, the extraordi- nary agent to which attention is invited by Eeichenbach. See his Eesearches on Magnetism, Electricity, &c., translated by Dr, Gregory, 1850. INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON PLANTS. 49 consider the "Vital Stimuli ;" secondly, Food ; and thirdly, the Atmosphere, in relation to life. This will prepare us to understand the proximate causes and nature of Death ; which will lead in turn to the consideration of the great compensatmg laws of Renewal, and to the curious mysteries of the diversity in the leases or specific terms of life. 22. The most striking illustrations of the importance of Light to the play of life are furnished by the Vegetable kingdom. Secluded from the solar light, plants, if they do not soon die, become wan, feeble, and sickly. What few leaves and shoots may be painfully put forth, are pale-yellow instead of green; and the ordinarily firm and solid stem be- comes watery and semi-translucent. If there be an' effort made to produce flowers and seeds, that is, to become parents, after self-preservation, the foremost, though it may be un- conscious, desire of all living things, it is but to fail miserably. The qualities of a plant are no less weakened by want of light than its constitution is. The acrid become bland, the dele- terious innocuous. In gardens and orchards, flowers and fruits accidentally shaded by dense foliage, fail to acquire their proper tint; while of the full sunlight come all the glow and brilliance of the blossom, the purple hue of the peach, the rosy one of the apple. Who has not observed the long- ing and beautiful affection with which plants kept in par- lors turn themselves towards the window; and how the large, broad leaves of the geranium will even press their bosoms to the glass ? The sunflower, the heliotrope,* the * The delicious, vanilla-scented, lilac flower, which now bears the name of Heliotrope is in no way specially deserving of it. Neither is the great golden Sunflower of our autumn gardens, which is so called, not, as often thought, because of remarkable sensitiveness to solar attraction, but because of its vast circular disk and yellow rays. 5 C 50 INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON PLANTS. turnsole, the salsafy, are celebrated for keeping their faces always fixed on " glorious Apollo." It would be much more difficult to find a plant which does not turn towards the sun, though its movement might be slower than is fabled. While these confess the sweetness and the potency of the solar pre- sence, that sullen troglodyte, the Lathrcea squaviaria, or tooth- Avort, of our woods, where the botanist obtains it only by excavating among earth and dead leaves, shows in its ske- leton-like configuration and cadaverous hue, that life in the dark is but a compromise with death. When the trees and shrubs, beneath the shade of which it usually secretes itself, are cut away, so as to expose the plant to the full action of the light, like a morose and unsocial man made to laugh against his will, it enlivens into a beautiful pink purple. Superabundance of light, on the other hand, elicits the most beautiful displays, both as to perfection of form, and height of color. Tschudi, in his picturesque " Sketches of Nature in the Alps," tells us that the flowers there have a wonder- fully vivid coloring. " The most brilliant blues and reds, with a rich brown, shading to black, are observable amidst the white and yellow flowers of the lower districts, both kinds assuming in the higher regions a yet more pure and dazzling hue." A similar richness of coloring is reported of the vegetation of Polar countries, where the hues not only become more fiery, but undergo a complete alteration under the influence of the constant summer light and the rays of the midnight sun, white and violet being often deepened into glowing purple. This happens not alone with the flowers. Withui the arctic circle, the lichens and mosses shine in hues of gold and purple quite unknown to them in lower latitudes. The balsamic fragrance of the Alpine plants, likewise caused by the brilliant light, is, according to Tschudi, no less remark- able and characteristic. From the auricula down to the violet- INFLUENCE OF LIGHT UPON ANIMALS. 51 scented moss (Byssus colithes), this strong aromatic property is widely prevalent, and far more so in the high Alps than in the lowlands. The strict physiological reason of the ill development of plants when deprived of the proper amount of light, at least of all green plants, is that plant-life, as re- gards personal nutrition, is spent in the decomposition of carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, from the proceeds of which are manufactured the tissues and their contents ; such decomposition bearing a constant ratio, cceteris paribus, to the amount of light enjoyed. To certain kinds of sea- weeds, it is proper to remark, light seems, by a curious exception, to be unfriendly and distasteful. This is the case with many of the Rhodospermese, as Delesseria sanguinea, D. ruscifolia, and Rhodomenia laciniata, which instead of growing in the open parts of the sea-coast, select obscure hollows", shadowed by overhanging cliffs, and in such dark spots alone attain their highest beauty. Some of this tribe will not grow at all in shallow water, or where there is a full stream of solar light ; and such as can bear to be so placed, usually show the incongeniality of their location by degeneracy of form and loss of brilliancy of tint. Delesseria sanguinea, made mock of in a glass vase, speedilv loses its lovely crimson, and becomes a mere white membrane. Fondness of seclu- sion from the full sunlight is remarkable also in many ferns. Under the shade of trees, or upon sheltered hedgebanks, they alone reach their maximum of luxuriance. 23. The value and importance of light to Animal life, though the immediate connection is not so obvious, all expe- rience shows it impossible to over-estimate. There is some- thing more than a metaphor in speaking of the " light of life." Light, in poetic language, is life. When Iphigenia in Euripides is reconciling herself to the death so happily averted, she exclaims, ^uifJS juoi, ipdov 74 EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF EXCESS. 36. Too much food is as bad as too little. To sacrifice to the stomach that nervous energy which ought to be devoted to the brain, the organ of our most ennobling and most pleasurable faculties, is, in fact, so far as regards the reten- tion of genuine manliness, little better than to commit sui- cide outright. Disease, though probably a third part of all that there is in the world is attributable to this cause, is, as in a former instance, the least of the evils that have to be affiliated on ill-regulated eating : infinitely more dire are the peevishness and ill-humor which it engenders, the gloomy, hypochondriacal and dissatisfied tempers which generally overtake the intemperate eater and drinker, and make him a pest both to himself and to society. Many a man's fall and ruin have come of the overloaded and thence disordered stomach of another ; as many a man's rise and prosperity of another's temperance and cheerful health. No less destructive is intemperance to the intellectual energies. The intellects which lie sunk in sluggishness through over- loading the stomach, are incomparably more numerous than those which are slow and stupid by nature. The authors themselves of their condition, the cross and imbecile through over-feeding, do not belong to society proper; they are not human, yet neither are they brutes, for no brute is intem- perate; no longer men, gluttons and drunkards form an outside class by themselves, the nobleness of their nature to be estimated, as in all other cases, by the quality and end of their delights. It is worthy of remark, that nothing is more speedily and certainly destructive also of the beauty of the countenance. Diet and regimen are the best of cos- metics ; to preserve a fair and bright com2:)lexion, the diges- tive organs need primary attention. 37. It is a striking and highly-suggestive fact in human economy, and one here deserving to be noticed, that the two physical powers which have most intimate relation with life, HUNGER AND LOVE THE WORLD'S MINISTERS. 75 tlie one, to its maintenance in the individual, the other to its communication to new beings, should be precisely those which, while they fill it with energy by right exercise, and confer the keenest of sensuous pleasures, are contrariwise the very powers through which may be inflicted, by abuse, the deepest injuries it is susceptible of Eating and drinking, attended to as nature directs, are the essential origin of every animal pleasure, and the basis of moral and intellec- tual happiness; similarly, the initiative of the sweet i^rivi- lege of offspring invigorates both body and mind,* and is the foundation of home and its smiling circle, Avith all the dearest and most beautiful afiections of humanity. The punishments, on the other hand, which fall upon abuse of the first, are paralleled exactly in the intellectual dulness, the melancholy, the pusillanimity and Aveariness of life which form the inevitable retribution of excess in the other. By Hunger and Love is the world held together and sweetened ; by Hunger and Love is it disgraced and made wretched. These are the two poles of the little world of human nature, round which everything else revolves; the very structure of the body in its relation to them corresponding with and resulting from the polar idea. It may be added, that where one of these great institutions is honored, there also, for the most part, is the other; where either is profaned, the pro- fanation extends to both. Though temperance and purity may sometimes not coexist in nice balance, no two things are ever more frequently in company than gluttony, over- drinking, and immodesty. It is in the intimate relation which they bear to life that the reason exists why in all * See on the latter points, Feuchsterleben's "Principles of Medi- cal Psychology," (Sydenham Society's vol., 1847,) sect. 67, p. 181. The author cites an extraordinary instance in "Casanova, who at euch moments solved the most difllicult mathematical problems." 76 SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EATING. ages there has been an intuitive reverence in rightly-ordered minds for the seal of sexual love ; and why a species of sanc- tity has from the earliest days of history attached to eating and drinking, which in ancient times entered largely into religious ceremonies, as they do now and will for ever in the most sacred rite of Christianity. " Eating and drinking," says Feuerbach, "are themselves religious acts, or at least otight to be so. With every mouthful, we -should think of the God who gave it." It is but an amplification of the custom, which commences every procedure of interest or importance with a plentiful spread upon the table. It may not be suspected, and is often dishonored, but the origin of the practice at least was a devout one. Friendship pursues the same course ; because, as life is the most precious of pos- sessions, the highest act of goodness that generous sentiment can perform is to provide means for its maintenance and prolongation. To offer food is symbolical of sincerely wish- ing health and longevity. How beautiful are affection and the gift of nourishment united in the first tenderness of the mother towards her babe! She loves and she feeds. Even the plant, when it opens its seed-pods and lets its offspring / fall to the earth, bestows upon each little embryo an imita- tive bosom in the milk-like farina which encloses it, and which suckles it during germination. CHAPTER V. TBE ATMOSFHXmiS IK ITS MEIATION TO LIFE. 38. By the Air — in repose the atmosphere, in movement the wind — "we live, and move, and have our being." So with all other living creatures. The very word "animal," signifies "breather." "Animated nature" means breathing nature; "inanimate" that which does not breathe. The corresponding Greek terms {^woc and C,(^ov are similarly- derived, through ^dio, to live, from duo, to breathe, and the intensitive prefix ^a. Grateful for these expressive figures, the poetic Greeks reflected them on to their source, calling the summer breezes the zephyrs, literally the "life- bringers." Zephyrus was emphatically the west wind, and deified, was said to produce flowers and fruit by the sweet- ness of his breath, charmingly alluded to by Homer in his description of the gardens of Alcinous.* Zehq or Jupiter * Odyssey vii. 119. Compare Virgil — " Zephyris cum Iseta vocantibus sestas;" " When gay summer comes, invited by the zephyrs." Oeorgic iii. 322, See also Lib. ii. 330. Modern poets have freely taken up the idea, and often with great elegance and success, as in the " Paradise" of Dante, — In quella parte, ove surge ad aprire Zeffiro dolce le novelle fronde Di che si vede Europa rivestire. — Canto xii, 46-48. " In that clime where rises the sweet zephyr to unfokl the new leaves wherein Europe sees herself fresh clothed." 7 « 77 78 MCP.AL INFLUENCES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. himself was originally only a personification of the air whence it is that in the poets his names are not uncommonly used in the place of aer and aura, as in the malus Jupiter, sid> Jove frigido, &c., of Horace, and when Theocritus says that Zshi; "is one while indeed fair, but at another time he rains." Aratus styles the air Zeb;; (puaixbz, the physical God. ^schylus gives it the epithet " divine." Virgil de- scribes it as ovmipotens pcder jEther. "But can air," says Cicero, "which hath no form, be God? For the Deity must necessarily be not only of some form, but the most beau- tiful." The mediate source of life to every occupant of earth. Hare describes it beautifully as the "unfathomable ether, that emblem of Omnipresent Deity, which everywhere enfolding and supporting man, yet baffles his senses, and is unperceived, except when he looks upwards and contem- plates it above him." 39. The air is the great physician of the world. Health confides in it as its most faithful friend. The weak it invi- gorates, the weary it refreshes. What is more grateful than to go from a close room into the pure, blowing breath of heaven, even if it be but on a barren highway ! What more animating and delicious than to exchange the hot, perspiring streets for the breezes of the hills or of the sea! It minis- ters largely even to our moral well-being. Children at boarding-schools are always better disposed to be diligent and Avell-behaved when the day has been commenced with a walk in the fresh air. Under its genial stimulus we forget our vexations and disappointments, we become cheerful and vivacious, and thence— what without cheerfulness is impos- sible — more willing "to refuse the evil and choose the good." No wonder that the poets seem never in happier mood than when the wind is perceived wafting through their verses — THE ATMOSPHERE NEEDFUL TO BEAUTY. 79 This castle hatli a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. This guest of summer, The temple haunting martlet, doth approve By his lov'd mansionry, that the heavens' breath Smells wooingly here. Far more intimate than we suppose is the relation of the atmosphere to the spiritual and intellectual. Nothing so powerfully stimulates intellectual productiveness, where the slightest capacity for it is present, as a walk in a gently- blowing wind. To the brilliant purity of the atmosphere of Athens, and of Greece in general, and the happy tempera- ture of the gales which fanned its hills, so favorite a topic with the panegyrists of that lovely country, are justly ascribed "the preeminence in learning, taste, literature, and the arts, in all that constituted aocpia in its widest accepta- tion, which distinguished Athens among the nations of the civilized world."* ^schylus enumerates among the bless- ings of a highly-favored land, "the gales of the winds blow- ing with clear sunshine." Pindar gives the same to the Islands of the Blest, " where shine the golden flowers." 40. At all times and seasons, with all forms and condi- tions of beings, it is no less the function of the Air to embellish. Who so rosy in the cheek as they Avho oftenest seek the pure country air! How does the plainest face improve, as it blushes under the courtship of the summer breezes ! Virgil, with the true poetic instinct, makes ^neas owe his beauty to the heavenly breath of Venus — * Consult, upon the connection of the Greek and Italian atmos- phere with their sculpture, Winckelman's "History of Art among the Ancient Greeks," Pai-t 1, section .3. Sj) THE ATMOSPHERE NEEDFUL TO BEAUTY. Namque ipsa decoram Cffisariem nato genitrix, lumenque juventee Purpureum, et Isetos oculis afflarat honores. "For Venus herself had adorned her son with graceful locks, flushed him with the radiant bloom of youth, and breathed a sprightly lustre on his eyes." The wind is necessary even to the vitalizmg of the aspects of insensate nature. Scenes dull and uninviting in its absence, become pleasant when we visit them under the inspiration of a breeze ; the loveliest lose in charm if the winds be asleep, though viewed by the light of summer. For this is not merely because the zephyrs temper the too fervent heat of the sunbeams, and by their physical action on the lungs and system generally give buoyancy and elas- ticity to the limbs, and thus enlarge our capacity for enjoy- ment. Nature never shows so lovely when still as when in movement; and it is by the wind that all her charms of motion are produced, whether of the clouds, or the trees, or the corn-fields, or the delicate stalks of the harebells. The grandeur of the unceasing roll of the sea, though partly OAving to another cause, proves in itself how mighty an ally to whatever is competent to become beautiful or sublime, is this viewless and marvelous visitant. Motion embellishes nature thus largely, because it is an emblem and clmracter- istic of life, to contemplate which, is one of the soul's highest pleasures, by reason of its own vitality. It loves to behold its immortality pictured in the outward world, be it ever so faintly; and if it meet no reflex in its surveys, feels de- frauded and unsatisfied. The correspondence of the forms of nature with the particular elements of our spiritual being, encourages this secret love of movement so strong within the soul ; for the soul not only sees in external nature the counterparts of its elements and qualities, but reflections THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE SENSES. 81 likewise of its activities and deeds. The swaying of the trees, the bending of the flowers, the waving of the corn, severally" picture occurrences in the inner life — the one kind promoted by the wind of nature, the other by the Spirit of God. 41. We depend upon the atmosphere for the effectuation of the powers of se7ise. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin or seat of touch, would all be impotent without it. Our phy- sical power of seeing, for example, depends on our inhabit- ing an atmosphere competent to receive and diffuse the light transmitted from the sun ; and our power of feeling in its equal adaptedness to receive and diffuse the solar heat. There is no feeling where there is no warmth ; what greater antagonism than between cold and sensation? No sound would exist in nature, if there were not an atmosphere sensible to vibrations ; here is its needfulness to hearing. So with odors and flavors, which it is only by inhalation Ave distinguish and enjoy — here are smell and taste. If we want to avoid the bitterness of physic, we hold the breath ; if to feast on some rich bounty to the palate, we inspire. How beautiful, again, is the imagery here disclosed ! As the atmosphere gives ability to see and hear physically, so does the divine life, as it flows into man's soul, fill him with power to exercise Intellect and Affection, which are spiritual sight and feeling. Love, or the will-principle, has from the beginning been "warmth," and Intelligence, or the mental eye, " light." Doubtless, man may j^ervert these inestimable gifts ; just as the earth, which keeps fashion and pace with nim in everything, applies the pure, sacred sunshine to the production of thoi'ns and nettles as well as flowers. But he has no intellectual or affectional jjoiver within him, but what is communicated from God ; just as he has no power of see- ing or of feeling but what he owes momentarily and con- tinuously to the sun or its derivatives. All that man receives D « 82 SPIRITUAL ANALOGIES OF LIGHT AND MUSIC. is heavenly; only what he prepares in and of himself, is bad. The atmosphere brings day-light though the sun be obscured. However overcast the skies, there is yet pro- duced sufficient illumination by the refracting properties of the atmosphere to constitute day. Here is shown, that how- ever thick the clouds which rise up to interpose between God and our hearts, he himself is ever shining steadily beyond them, and in his benevolence transmits to us suffi- cient for our needs. God never deserts any one, not even the most Avicked ; " He is kind even to the unthankful and the evil ;" and though man, like the earth sending up its dense vapors, may shut out the direct sunbeams which de- scend towards him, he is still provided with a diffused light of refreshing, energizing succor, brought by the all-per- vading, all-penetrating Spirit. "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?" From the same circumstance, i. e. the refracting properties of the atmosphere, we enjoy the solar light for a long time before the sun actually rises above the horizon, and for as long a period after its setting. In the evening, when by the rota- tion of the earth the sun itself is made to disappear, beams of light are still passed into the higher regions of the air, and thence diffused downAvards to the surface of the earth, so that for a while we are unconscious of the loss. Except for this beautiful provision, the evening sun would in a moment set, and the earth be shrouded in sudden darkness. In the morning, by a similar process of irradiation, the atmosphere receives and sheds abroad beams which are not yet visible. 42. The eye and the ear, or sight and heariug, are the types and continents of the senses generally. So, in the conveyance by the atmosphere of light and sound, is summed up, representatively, all that it is the function of the Divine life to communicate. For sound, when its tones ANALOGIES OF LIGHT AND MUSIC. 83_ are agreeable and harmonious, is music, and music is objec- tive or visible nature reiterated in a vocal form — the audi- ble counterpart of whatever is lovely and perfect to the eye. Hence the wonderful and enchanting variety in the sounds of nature; a variety sufficient, as aa'c have elsewhere seen, to furnish the foundations of all language.* The dashing of waterfalls, the roar of the sea, the voices of the trees in their different kinds, each intoning to the wind in a new mode, together with the multitudinous diversities of utterance proper to the animate part of creation, are not mere acci- dental results of physical conformation, nor are they mean- ingless or arbitrary gifts. Every one of them is inseparably identified with the object that utters it, because of an origi- nal and immutable agreement in quality. Music, in its es- sential nature, is an expression of the Creator as truly as his objective works. Expressed in forms, the air presents him to the eye — the organ preeminently of the intellect: expressed in sounds, it presents him to the ear — the organ sacred to the affections. When we listen to a beautiful melody or " air," it is surveying a charming and varied landscape, vivid with life, and adorned with innumerable elegances, only addressed to another sense- — heard instead of seen. It is not only a sublime fact that God thus doubly places himself before us — it is a necessary result of his very nature ; for music stirs the soul so deeply because of its pri- mitive relation to his goodness, and thus to everything con- nected with our emotional life; objective nature, on the other hand, so largely delights the intellect (having only a secondary influence on the heart), because it is fashioned after the ideas of his wisdom. Each, moreover, assumes its loveliest when the other is in company, because in Him * " Figurative Language : its Origin and Constitution," chapters 7 an€l 8. 84 A CHARACTERISTIC OF ORGANIC LIFE. their prototypes are married. Never is nature so beautiftil as when we view it in the hearing of true music; in no place does music sound so sweet as amid her responsive and tranquil retreats. Why should we go in ? My friend Stephano^ signify, I pray you, Within the house, your mistress is at hand, And bring your music forth into the air. Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears. Echo, due like other sounds to the agency of the atmosphere, exemplifies the same fine truths. The sympathy we feel with the objective forms of nature is the equivalent of the agreeable answers with Avhich she acknowledges our voice. Echo, in her beautiful and undelayed replies, is the image and emblem of the responses in which the emotions of man's spirit, when he addresses himself to God, are immediately reflected back upon himself, coming invisibly, he knows not whence, but with a magical and most sweet power. No wonder that the poets have in all ages given Echo a fond and grateful mention.* 43. Let us pass on to the consideration of the air in its immediate bearing upon the maintenance of organic life. * What can be more beautiful than the following, in the " Per- sians" of J^schylus {Itcu ye fitvroi k. r. X. 386-391) — "When Day, drawn by white steeds, had overspread the earth, resplendent to be- hold, iirst of all a shout from the Greeks greeted Echo like a song, and Echo from the island rock in the same moment shouted back an inspiring cry." Moschus, in his elegy on Bion, and Bion, in his own sweet poem upon the death of Adonis, represent Echo as sharing in their lamentations, as does Milton, bewailing Lycidas. Other ele- gant allusions occur in Horace, Odes 1, 20; Tasso, Gerusalemme xi. 11 ; Euripides, Shakspere, Camoens, Shelley, and Byron, particularly one in Manfred. RESPIRATION IN AGREEMENT WITH VIGOR. 85 Grand as are the capacities of the vital stimuli, or heat, light, and electricity, and invaluable as are the uses sub- served by feeding, it remains incontestably true that without continuous supplies of fresh air. Life cannot go on. We are forever referred back to Respiration as the prime cha- racteristic of a healthy, living creature. The assimilation of food' may be suspended for a time ; darkness and severe cold may be endured, the former even for years ; but respi- ration must be steady, or the creature dies. Every living thing breathes more or less ; only the lowest forms of animal life can bear intermissions of breathing for any considerable period ; even the foul parasites called Entozoa cannot live without air, though secluded by their position from direct contact with the atmosphere. Entophytal fungi, or those which are found in the interior of other plants, and some- times in the bodies of animals, are for the most part only the mycelia of species which the imperfect supply of air prevents from developing into the perfect form. 44. Not only is life, as a whole, inseparable from respira- tion, but every variety in the manifestation of life. Where respiration is vigorous, as in the feathered tribes, life is ener- getic ; where it is feeble, as in the reptile, life is slow. Similar phenomena pertain to the various epochs of life. "The rest- lessness of the child, and the activity of the boy, correspond with the vigor of their breathing : the calmness and power of the man are combined with a usually tranquil respiration, capable of being increased to the utmost as occasion calls for the higher energies of life; in the old man, deliberate in his movements, respiration is limited, and usually slow." Breathing varies even with the condition of the body, and its employments. We breathe differently in sickness and in health ; differently asleep and awake ; differently in the per- formance of every action of our animal organs. We breathe in one mode when we walk, in another when we run. Breath- 8 86 OBJECT OF RESPIRATION. ing, accordingly, is not only a physiological but a representa- tive phenomenon. In the respiratory breast dwell, along with its health, magnanimity and heroic courage; where the breathing is languid, we look but for timorousness and de- bility. In our own species, the face itself, the silent echo of the heart, is not a more faithful index to our states, either of body or mind, than is our breathing. As the emotions manifest themselves in the play of the muscles and the light of the eyes, as they are shown, too, in the tone of voice, in the harshness, the tremor, the asjDcrity or the sweetness of the uttered sound, and are interpreted thereby, so is it with the attendant breathing. Let us but hear how a person is breathing, and though he be out of sight we may infer to a certain extent, how he is employed, and judge of his general tranquility or the reverse. See what testimony to it there is in Language ! To be " animated," to be " spirited," or "full of sj)irits," is to have breath in plenty. To be "out of spirits," " sjiiritless," or "dispirited," is to be destitute of breath; literally in every case; for all agreeable, lively, or "life-like" emotions, tend to raise and quicken the breath, while dejDressing ones tend to lower and deaden it. Eager- ness j)ants ; desjoondency sighs ; weariness yawns ; extreme fear makes us breathless or " aghast."* 45. The object of resj)iration is closely allied to that of Feedmg; nay, it is no other than that of feeding. Consist- ing of an infinite number of little stomachs, closely asso- ciated and connected, but feeding upon aerial and gaseous food instead of terrestrial and solid, such as is received into the cavity of the stomach proper, the Lungs are no less im- mediately concerned in the maintenance of the health and * See for an admirable development of the whole subject, Garth Wilkinson's banquet-like chapter of the Lungs, in "The Human Body, and its connexion with Man." OBJECT OF RESPIRATION. 87 vigor of the blood than the great, proper stomach itself. Not only does the blood require to be nourished with the products of digestion, but to be freely and regularly aerated, not to have air directly admitted to it, but to be brought into that peculiar proximity to the air which is effected by the process of natural breathing. This, in the mammalia, takes place, as we are all aware, in the lungs. Immediately the blood enters these organs, in the process of circulation, the fact is signalled by certain nerves to the medulla oblon- gata.^ In an instant, obedient to an imperious order sent back through certain other nerves, the diaphragm and muscles of the ribs expand the chest, and thus enlarge its cavity. A vacuum would now be caused, but the air, rush- ing down from without, fills every corner, and in so doing, aerates the awaiting blood, feeding it with oxygen, and re- ceiving carbon in exchange. Then the various muscles renew their play; but this time so as to contract, instead of expand the chest, the lungs ex'sjDire, instead of mspiring, the carbon is ejected by the mouth and nostrils, and the series of actions constituting a respiration is complete. Renewed by the oxygen thus communicated, the blood now moves on again to the heart, whence it was first propelled, and whence it is again transmitted to the body, again to' be carbonized and weakened, and in due course to be returned into the lungs for refreshment as before. Thus is the history of the lungs inseparable from that of the heart. Complementary to one another, these two noble organs, the heart and the lungs, and their functions, circulation and respiration, form a beautiful duality in unity, representing in the body the * Medulla oblongata is the name given by anatomists to a peculiar organ contained within the skull, yet no part of the brain properly so called, but intermediate between this and the spinal cord, upon the summit of which it stands. 88 DUALITY IN UNITY. understanding and the affections, and their cooperative play in every action of the soul. The latter, as we have seen above, represent in turn the all-supporting wisdom and good- ness of God — the infinite, Divine essences which, expressed as life, conserve the universe. They fall, accordingly, under those two sublime, reciprocal principles of creation which in their most externalized physical embodiment we term Male and Female; and whose noblest presentation, or Man and Woman, are the lungs and the heart of the world. As man and woman, by reciprocity and cooperation, instrumentally keep the human race alive; so, by harmonious, conjugal action and re-action, the lungs and the heart instrumentally keep the human body alive. If either fail to perform its ofiice, the other sinks powerless, and the fabric dies. Let the heart be as well-disposed to live as it may, unless its de- sires be recognized and responded to by the lungs, all is in vain; for though there is no life where there is no blood, there is no proper, life-sustaining blood where there is no air: conversely, the lungs are efficient for their part, as stewards of life, only in so far as the heart cooperates with them ; so grand and universal is the eternal fiat that nothing shall exist for itself alone, but only as the husband or the wife of some other thing; that the unions of each pair shall be followed by the development and sustentation of some form or mode of life; that celibacy shall be infertility, and estrangement a gateway for death. Until the two organs are conjoined in complementary action, by the lungs drawing breath, the grand drama of existence, as we well know, does not commence. In the womb, life exists only in potency. Marriage is everywhere the real beginning; and there are no real beginnings without it.* * See the beautiful description of the marriage of the Heart and Lungs, in Swedenborg's "Animal Kingdom," i. 398. THE HEART AND THE LUNGS. 89- 46. It is not to be imao-ined that the heart and kmo-s do the whole work of life. Just as marriage, which has for its physical end the sustentation of the human race, requires for its effectuation a variety of subsidiary and contributive conditions, so the maintenance of the life of the body by the heart and lungs, which is a representative of marriage and its object, demands (intermediately through the nervous centres) the contributive functions of the stomach, the skin, the liver, and other organs. And more than this : if the action of any one of them become deranged, neither heart nor lungs can do their work for them ; just as with complex machinery, Avhere, if a single wheel be thrown " out of gear," the coordination of actions is so interfered with that the Avhole apparatus comes to a stand. Every organ of the body is in league with every other organ. Every one of them has its OAvn peculiar province and vocation, but is in treaty at the sarue moment, offensive and defensive, with every other. Nothing is proper to any member in this unique and truly royal society that does not go forth in turn for the interest and advantage of that society. Local benefits immediately become public ones ; what injures in one part, is a calamity to the whole. " The cardinal life of every organ," says Swedenborg — " the excellency of its life over other organs — consists in the fact, that whatever it has of its OAvn, still in a wider sense belongs to the community; and whatever afterwards results from the community to the organ, is the only individual property which the latter claims." It is not that the heart and lungs are all, but that life is preeminently effectuated through them ; the cessation of their activity, or of the activity of either of, them, being also, as we shall see presently, the most usual and imminent cause of death. So far from any one organ, or set of organs, being autocratic, there is nothing in the whole scope of the natural history of the human body more wonderful than 90 SYMPATHY OF ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS. the S}'mpathy and concurrent energy of its various parts, unless it be the fine illustrative analogy afforded in the relations of the senses, as intimated to our daily conscious- ness. Not one of the senses can be exercised without sug- gesting to the mind acts and objects which belong to one or more of their colleagues ; and the highest pleasures we enjoy through their medium, are those which result from our being able to use soine two or three of them at once. The water- fall, we love not only to see, but to hear ; and not only to hear, but to see; the eye helps the palate to the higher / enjoyments of food, and the nose to be more gratified with / the smell of flowers ; who ever looks on the smooth cheek of a little child, without seeking an enhanced pleasure in patting it! True science is never science only. On the same principle commences all true investigation. To know any single and individual thing thoroughly, it needs that we gather instruction concerning it from all things. To learn the true nature of a primrose, we must uiquire of firs and jDalm-trees, and every other plant that springs forth from the earth's bosom. From the same facts, brought to bear in yet another direction, may we learn how it is that undue indulgence in any sensuality enslaves the whole being, and gradually chains a man's every thought and wish to the adopted habit of the sense given way to. 47. In the full sense of the term. Respiration is a far grander performance than the mere inhalation of fresh air through the air-]Dassages. Essentially, it is concurrent and coextensive with the circulation, so that its seat is the entire fabric. Numbers of animals have no lungs, commonly so called ; many have no special respiratory organs whatever. They breathe, nevertheless. Such, for example, are jelly- fishes, and the lowest forms of Crustacea. In these, respi- ration takes place through the medium of the skin. Not that this is a ncAv arrangement for the purpose of breathing, PECULIARITIES OF BREATHING APPARATUS. 91 now for the first time met with. Animals possessing a special apparatus, have cutaneous respiration ; man has it, in a slight degree. Here, however, it is only auxiliary; whereas in the jelly-fishes it stands in lieu of the pulmonary kind, and the creature depends upon it alone. The mecha- nism of respiration in animals possessing lungs, is to be regarded merely as the highest development of a respiratory apparatus. It holds the first place because it is the mecha- nism by which the greatest quantity of oxygen can be taken into the system. There is no difierence in principle between the two kinds ; it is a difference simply of vigor and com- pleteness, the oxygen being admitted over an infinitely larger surface in lungs than when it has to make its way through the integuments. The positmi of the respiratory apparatus, which, like its form, is most curiously diversified in different creatures, is, generally speaking, regulated by the medium in which the animal is intended to live — on land, or in water. Terrestrial animals, breathing air in its gasiform condition, have internal breathing apparatus ; aquatic animals, collecting it from the water, have the apparatus in or near the surface. By virtue of these arrangements, neither class of animal can endure exchange of natural location. The bird and the mammal drown if submerged in water; the fish drowns if exposed to the atmosphere. This is, in the former case, because water cannot furnish an adequate supply of atmospheric air ; in the latter, because the respiratory organs, from their external position, rapidly become dry by evaporation. Aquatic animals which have them partially covered, live longer out of water than those which have them exposed. The activity of life, in aquatic as well as in terrestrial animals, is univer- sally in the ratio of the development of their respiratory apparatus. The energetic habits of fishes, and the higher Crustacea, such as crabs and lobsters, correspond with the 92 EESPTRATION AND ANIMAL HEAT. higher development of their breathing organs ; the com- paratively sluggish life of the moUusca, the annelida, and the branchial amphibia, corresponds with the accompany- ing loAver development. A creature j)ossessing both pul- monary and cutaneous respiration, but able to live by cutaneous respiration only, if prevented from breathing through the lungs, sinks into the sluggishness and inactivity which characterize the animals it is then leveled with in regard to qualification for breathing.* 48. By respiration, accordingly, in the complete idea of the process, and however effectuated, whether by lungs or other apparatus, or cutaneously, oxygen is introduced to every part, and carbon removed from every part. The chemical process which goes on during the formation of the carbonic acid in which the carbon is carried away, is at- tended by the extrication of " animal heat." Here, then, are three purposes served : renovation of the blood, purifi- cation of it, and sustentation of temperature. Not that " animal heat," even as commonly so understood, comes exclusively of the combustion concurrent with respiration. The evolution of animal heat is largely dependent on the nervous energy. The loAver the nervous energy of an ani- mal, the lower is its temj^erature ; the higher the nervous energy, the higher is its temperature. It is not the larger or smaller nervous system whicli is thus operative, but the higher or lower nervous energy. Dr. Carpenter, in his large work on Comparative Physiology, gives every kind of proof and illustration. Mr. Newport's papers on the Temperature and Respiration of Insects, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1835 and 1837, may also be usefully con- '"' See for illustrations, an excellent paper on Respiration, by Dr. Sibson, in the Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, vol. xvii., 1850. RESPIRATION AND ANIMAL HEAT. 93 suited. "Animal heat," in the popular use of the phrase, is not animal heat after all. What is so termed by the physiologists is as purely " mineral" heat as any that radi- ates from inanimate fire or candle. Animal heat, properly so called, is the zeal which urges the creature to the active exercise of its powers. There could not be a particle in the' body of Avhat is commonly but erroneously so designated, if the Divine Life did not already warm it with this, the true animal heat. That which the mere combustion of oxygen and carbon introduces is but supplementary and contingent. Under all phenomena lies a profounder cause than chemistry or anatomy can point out. The Divine Life everywhere takes the initiative ; the apparent causes are secondary, and are operative only as resting on it as a substratum. It should be noted, too, that the lower we descend in the scale of being, the more do these apparent, scientific causes seem disused. While, for instance, the higher animals have their blood propelled by the muscular engine we call the heart, in many of the lower kinds, and in plants, there is no such engine; the circulation goes on nevertheless. Besides the quasi-chemical use of the air in respiration, there is a use in the mechanical act of breathing it. There is no life where there is no motion, and there is no vital motion but where Air is passing to and fro, or indirectly actuating. The lungs are the first to move under its impulse; the heart beats time to them ; the brain falls as often as we inspire, and rises with every expiration. In a child under two years old, the latter may be felt as plainly as the pulse. Place your hand low down on the body, and there too is found constant and consentaneous movement Avith the lungs. Respiration, in a word, keeps everything on the move, and as soon as it ceases, comes the stagnation of death. 49. Respiration does more yet than bring in oxygen and carry away carbon, and subserve the maintenance of vital 94 THE ATMOSPHERE A SOURCE OF FOOD. warmth. It is itself a positive feeder of the body, with good aliment or with bad, according to the kind of atmosphere we inhale. The air is no mere compound of oxygen, nitro- gen, and carbon, as such. "It is a product elaborated from all the kingdoms of nature; the seasons are its education; it is passed through the fingers of every herb and tree. Who- ever looks upon it as one universal thing, is like a dreamer playing with the words animal kingdom, vegetable kingdom, and so forth, and forgetting that each comprises many genera, innumerable species, and individuals many times innumera- ble. The air is a cellarage of aerial wines, the heaven of the spirits of the plants and flowers, which are safely kept there till called for by the lungs and skin. The assumption that the oxygen is the all, is ungrateful for the inhabitant of any land whose fields are fresh services of fragrance from county to county and from year to year." All the virtues of the ground and of vegetation are in the atmosjjhere by exhalation ; it is a kind of solution of some of everything that the world contains, and from it, as from a fountain, all come into the lungs and circulation. Not only does man live in the world, but the >vorld, as to its essences, is con- tained within itself, literally as well as corresj)ondentially. Thus is our assertion not a meaningless one, that all nature subsidizes and ministers to the blood. The ruins of the air, when chemistry has pulverized it, may be no more than what a brief formula of Roman letters will express ; but its influence on us, while unmolested, comes of a compositeness that no art can emulate. "Change of air" is something more to the sick man than change of oxygen, and on the other side of the picture are the dark, sad mysteries of air- conveyed infections, and the endless evils produced by con- fined, ill-ventilated abiding places. Dirty air is the source of incomparably greater evils than dirty water. Many complaints we are least apt to attribute to it, take their vise, THE ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO PLANTS. 95 without doubt, in shut-up bed-rooms, and other domestic stagnant air-pools, the contents of Avhich, were they out visi- ble, would fill us with horror and disgust. The body is not the only sufferer from impure air. Though vice and im- pure air may be found in company, virtue and foul air are incompatible. The temper of a public meeting is often in- fluenced by the condition of the air Avhich it is breathing ; to talk of a "moral atmosphere" is not altogether a figure of speech. To the extreme and disgusting foulness of the air which they commonly breathe is, probably, to be re- ferred much of the indulgence of the poor in strong drink, especially ardent spirits. They take it as a necessity, claimed by nature as a kind of counterpoise to the ofiensive and pernicious actions of bad smells. The best temperance agent that can be got is a clean and well ventilated home. No training, however skilfully conducted, no dieting or tee- totalism, however rigid or prolonged, can bring a man into good condition, either of body or mind, so long as he is con- demned to breathe an impure atmos^^here. Sanitary asso- ciations do well in teaching that the life is the blood, and that without pure air, healthy blood is but a name. 50. The particular mode in which the air mmisters to plant-life is found in the history of the growth or develop- ment of the vegetable structure. The great mass of the ve- getable fabric is derived, not from the soil, but from the air which bathes the leaves. The strictly " mineral " part of its food, as lime, silica, and potash, it undoubtedly sucks from the earth, whence the value of manures, and the difference produced by "good" and "bad" soils, but it is at the cost of the carbonic acid, Avater, and ammonia of the atmosphere, that it essentially lives, (p. 63.) Much, indeed, of what it ])roximately procures from under ground is virtually atmo- spheric, because previously carried thither by the rain. Thousands of plants have no connection whatever with the 96 PLANTS UNCONNECTED WITH THE EARTH. / ' earth, but grow upon the surface of other plants. Such are the beautiful aerial flowers called Orchidese, which in their wild state, live from first to last on the trees of their native forests, and demand an imitative location when brought into our hot houses and conservatories. They are not like the misletoe, parasites — thieves of the substance of the tree they perch upon, but simply " epiphytes" — bird-like lodgers among the branches. Dendrobium, Epidendrum, Dendroli- rion, are names ingeniously descriptive of their nature. Es- sentially, without doubt, they feed as terrestrial plants do — indebted largely to the various decaying organic matters which accumulate round about them, both of animal origin and vegetable. Lifted, however, as they are, so far above the surface of the earth, they show, in the most beautiful manner, how independently of direct connection with it ve- getable existence may be maintained, and how thoroughly at home it may be in the atmosphere. Two species of Or- chidese, called Air-plants, find in it their entire nourish- ment.* What epiphytes are in the air, Algse are in the water, drawing from it their chief supplies ; for their roots, so called, are little more than organs of adhesion. ISTot wholly so, since many show a decided preference for certain kinds of rocks, and for the branches of certain other Algse, seated upon which, they attain higher perfection. Under the influence of light, the leaves, both of terrestrial and aei-ial plants, become the seats at once of respiration and as- similation. If leaves be not developed, as in the cactus, their place is supplied by the tender green skin of the gene- ral surface, which is then so modified as to perform the fo- * The trunks and branches of the trees in tropical Brazil, Mr. Gardner tells us, abound not only with Orchidese, but with Bromelia- cese, Tillandsias, Ferns, and various climbing species of Begonia, all of course dependent upon the Atmosphere. PLANTS AND ANIMALS OF MUTUAL SERVICE. 97 liar functions. Carbon, ammonia, and water are taken i:p, and oxygen is set free. Hence the leaves are well styled the "lungs" of plants; the lungs, for their part, being animal trees clothed Avith innumerable foliage. The leafless plants may be compared with the animals whose respiration is wholly cutaneous. To enable respiration to take place, the cuticle of every leaf is pierced wdth innumerable pores well called by the vegetable anatomist, stomates, since mouths they are, both in form and oiSce. The most ordinary mi- croscoj)e will bring them into view, and show a wonderful variety in their figure. 51. Absorbing carbon, and liberating oxygen, which is the reverse of the animal process of res2Diration, plants are the great purifiers of the atmosphere as regards animals. The only exception to their use in this respect occurs in the fungi — ^plants which, unlike the purifying tribes, are never of a green color. What animal respiration exhales, vegeta- ble respiration consumes, and vice versa. There is, however, always some small amount of carbonic acid in the course of disengagement from plants, especially at night, when also they absorb oxygen. On this is founded the popular notion, so immensely exaggerated, that plants kept in a bed-room are injurious to the sleeper. Plants, by their assimilation, purify the air much more than by their respiration they vitiate it. They are breathers at once for their own interests, and for those of animals. Plants live by animals, and animals by plants. The girdling and encircling aif, their common property, is that which truly makes the whole world kin. "The carbonic acid with which our breathing fills the air, to-morrow will be spreading north and south, and striving to make the tour of the Avorld. The date trees that groAV round the fountains of the Nile will drink it in by their leaves; the cedars of Lebanon will take of it to add to their stature; the cocoa-nuts of Tahiti will grow richer on 9 E 98 TREES AND PLANTS IN CBMETEEIES. it; the lotus plants will change it into flowers. Contrari- wise, the oxygen we are taking in was distilled for us, some little time ago, by the magnolias of the Susquehanna, and the great trees that skirt the Orinoco and the Amazon. The rhododendrons of the Himalayahs contribute to it, the roses and myrtles of Cashmere, the cinnamon and the clove trees of the Spice islands." In recognizing this fine use of plants in the economy of the world, we must be careful not to over- estimate it. The primary use of plants is to supply food; the purification of the air is but a subordinate use. For every kindness they do to the lungs of animals there are a thousand done to their stomachs. 52. In the fact that vegetation purifies the air by absorbing from it what is deleterious, resides a capital argument against intra-mural interments. There cannot be a doubt that the beautiful, time-honored, and world-wide practice of shelter- ing graves with trees, and adorning them Avith flowers, is attended by valuable sanitary results, such as are wholly precluded when burials are made amid streets and houses. While the sight of evergreen trees, and of floAvers in their season, soothes and consoles the mind, by virtue of their associations and emblematic teachings, the atmosphere is improved and renovated. So true it is that whatever is practically wise is always in keeping with Avhat is poetically beautiful, and an exemplification of it. Many of the trees which poetical intuition has pronounced appropriate to the side of the sepulchre, by reason of their evergreen or other symbolical characters, are precisely such as scientific design would approve. Witness the arbor-vitse, the Oriental cypress, and certain kinds of coniferse ; all of them more or less narrow and conical in form, neither covering a large sjoace Avith their branches, nor casting too much shade Avhen the sun sliines, and freely admitting the air and light. The beauty of the cypress-planted cemeteries of the Turks is Avell known. WAVING BOUGHS BETTER THAN MARBLE. 99 At Constantinople tlie chief promenade for Europeans is the cemetery of Pera, delightfully placed on a hill-side, and abounding with this handsome tree. "At Scutari," Miss Pardee tells us, "preferred by the Turks to all other burial- places, because of certain comfortable superstitions connected with it, a forest of the finest cypress extends over an im- mense space, clothing hill and valley, and seen far off at sea, — an object at once striking and magnificent." In the cemetery appropriated to the Armenians, instead of the cypress, the Acacia is the prevailing tree. Marble is good, but Avaving boughs are better. It will be one of the most certain indications of progress in real, practical science, when town burial-grounds shall be abolished for the sake of rural cemeteries like gardens. Wherever such have been formed, they have been regarded with satisfaction, and their general establishment would unquestionably lead to a marked diminution of average mortality, by removing a deadly evil. CHAPTER VI. MOTION THJE VNIVERSAI. SIGN OF I.1FE. 53. Reviewing these various and wonderful processes, we cannot fail to observe how, in its every phase and expres- sion, the great sign and certificate of life is Motion. Use- fully, then, may we pause upon the consideration of it as a kind of summary and continent of vital phenomena. No- thing exists independently of motion as its cause ; by reason, likewise, of motion, all things hold together and preserve their form. "Passive life," sometimes spoken of, is a con- tradiction in terms ; certain states of being may be relatively passive, but there is no such thing as absolute passivity. In no case a state ipso facto, passivity is everywhere an incident of motion, consequently to be referred to motion, and to be explained by motion. Doubtless there is great diversity in the degree and amount of motion ; also in its manifestation to the eye. We must not confound it with moving about. Motion, ordinarily so called, implying visible change of place and position, and furnishing us Avith ideas of time, does not comprise the All of motion. There is motion which no eye can perceive, motion Avhich we are made aware of only by witnessing its results. Of this kind, indeed, is the chief part; the most wonderful and efficient movements in the world are those which proceed in secrecy and silence.* * Robert Boyle has an essay, well 1-nown to the curious, "On the great effects of Languid and Unheeded Motion." See in particular, chapters viii. and ix. 100 ANIMAL MOTION. 101 The feebler and briefer the exhibition of motion, especially the latter, the lower is the expression of life ; the more ener- getic and continuous it is, the higher is the life — so that apart from structure, motion is a criterion of vital excellence, of course under the reservation that the quality of life depends primarily and essentially upon its End ; else would the sea be more living than a plant ; and a watch, or other piece of self-acting mechanism, commend itself as of nobler nature than many animals. Inanimate as it is, the watch, by rea- son of these relations, excites agreeable ideas of life, at least in the minds of the intelligent; while by the child and the savage, unacquainted with its construction, it is unhesita- tingly pronounced " alive !" Experience rectifies the error, but vindicates the principle upon which the mistaken judg- ment was entertained. 54. Animals, as holding the highest offices in the economy of creation, therefore the noblest forms, and the highest degrees of life, present in their various history the completest examples of vital motion. Their movements are both in- ternal and external. The great mternal movement is the circulation of the blood, and its familiar token, the beating of the heart. This is the circumstance on which the very name of Life is founded; its proximate root, the Anglo- Saxon lyhhan, "to live," being ultimately assignable to the Arabic hib, the heart, or the congenerous Hebrew name for that organ, leh. Literally, therefore, "life" means "the heart;" a fact beautifully in unison with the great funda- mental truth, alike of religion and philosophy, that Life is Love. It is for etymologists to determine how far the law of transposition of letters may or may not show "lub" and "life" in the Greek word (pc?'.-eco, "I love." The ancient Egyptians used a heart, placed in the midst of a censer of flame, for the hieroglyph of heaven, the source to the world, as the heart is to the body, of all activity and life. Nothing 9 ® 102 MOTION IN PLANTS. is easiei' than to verify that the life of the body consists in its internal movements. How painful to sit perfectly still, even for a few minutes, as when having one's likeness taken by photography! The performers in tableaux vivans and poses plastiques find that to play at statues is the hardest trial of human nature. Dependent on the circulation, and less admired only because of its deep privacy, is that won- derful and incessant flux of the ultimate atoms of the body which has been described above, and which led the genius of Cuvier to compare it to a whirlpool, an intense and un- ceasing stream, into which new matter is for ever flowing, and from which the old is as steadily moving out. 55. External movement culminates in the grand preroga- tive of locomotion, the highest terrene presentation of the great omnipresent law of Attraction, — the law which, under the formula and name of chemical afiinity, brings together the atoms of the pebble ; and which, at the other extreme of creation, under the formula and name of Love, impels all creatures towards what they have need of or desire. Where there is the greatest capacity for locomotion, there also is Ingenuity at its maximum. The animals wdiich possess least of the constructive instinct are the slow-paced reptiles ; the expertest artisans in the world, are the birds and flying insects — man, of course, excepted, who has more capacity than either; not, indeed, of the same nature, nor corporeal at all, but derived from the very instruments Avhich prove his ingenuity also the highest, his railways and his ships. 56. As in the animal kingdom, so in the vegetable. Plants, quiescent as they appear, depend for their existence on the motion of the juices contained within their substance; the force Avith which the sap flows onwards when the plant is in tall vigor, is like the rush of a little river ; even in winter, when visible vitality is suspended, motion is still going on, though languidly; the process of development is nevei MOTION IN PLANTS. 103 entirely arrested ; in the season of deepest torj)idity, a slight enlai'gement of the buds, in preparation for the spring, is still to be observed. Were we endowed with eyesight ade- quately fine, and were the integuments and tissues of plants made transparent, we should see in every twig and leaf of every plant the most energetic and persevering activity; as by means of a glass hive we may Avatch at our leisure the working of its indefatigable little townsfolk. One class of internal movements in j)lants does actually allow of obser- vation, just as in certain reptiles, as the frog, it is possible to observe the circulation of the blood-corpuscles. When a small portion of the cuticle of the Vallisneria is submitted to a sufficient magnifying power, in the interior of every one of its delicate cells there is seen a beautiful swimming pro- cession of little globules, round and round, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, till the vitality of the fragment is ex- hausted. A similar motion has been noticed in many other plants, terrestrial as well as aquatic, and probably it is general. Even the external movement of plants, induced by the excitation of the wind, notwithstanding its purely extraneous origin, is a highly important circumstance of their economy. It is evident that the boughs of trees are so arranged, and the leaves of plants in general so distributed and poised, as to admit of the swaying and fluttering which the wind promotes ; and that benefit results from such move- ment, corresponding, as it does, to the exercise of their limbs by animals, it seems unreasonable to doubt. How different the condition of the captives in our green-houses and conser- vatories, debarred from every opportunity of movement, compared with that of the glad, free trees, Avaving through- out the year in the breezes of the open country ! As exercise gives strength and solidity to the animal fabric, so do the vegetable denizens of the fields and hills wax sturdy through the agitation of their branches. When Homer would indicate 104 MOTIONS OF INORGANIC NATURE. unusual strength and toughness in his heroes' spear-shafts, he calls them d,ve/j.OTp£(irj(^, "wind-nurtured," or "wind- hardened." " Pine-trees," says the prince of arborists, " in thick woods, where the high winds have not free access to shake them, grow tall and slender, but not strong; while others, placed in open fields, and frequently shaken by strong blasts, have not only thick and sturdy stems, but strike deep root, and raise beautiful and spreading branches."* 57. Astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, though their sub- jects belong to an entirely different province of being, find, like physiology, that all their phenomena com-mence in mo- tion. Not only has it been placed beyond a doubt that the group of worlds which includes our own is advancing through the heavens, but it has been determined in what direction it moves, and within certain limits, what is the velocity of its motion. If true of one system of sun and planets, it must be true of all. Every star that we espy is unquestionably rolling onwards, and carrying with it the spheres to which it is the local orb of day, the immeasurable altitude alone preventing the eye from pursuing; as when from the brow of a lofty clifi" by the sea we discern far-dis- tant shij)S that we know by their .spread canvas to be sailing, but which the extreme remoteness make ajopear to be at anchor. " If we imagine," says Humboldt, " as in a vision of the fancy, the acuteness of our senses preternaturally sharpened, even to the extreme limits of telescopic vision, and incidents which are separated by vast intervals of time, compressed into a day, or an hour, everything like rest in special existence will forthwith disappear. We sh^U find the innumerable hosts of the fixed stars commoved in groups in different directions; nebulae draAving hither and thither, * Evelyn. Sylva, Book 2d, chap. 8, MOTIONS OF INORGANIC NATURE. 105 like cosmic clouds ; the milky-way breaking up in particular parts, and its veil rent; motion in every part of the vault of heaven." It is the motion of our own little planet which chiefly adorns the sky with its varied splendors, as sunrise and sunset, and the shinmg and stately march of the con- stellations. Of the agitation of its enveloping atmosphere come 'the winds for health of body, and the magnificent sce- nery of cloud-land for delight of soul; the rain, the tem- pest, the Aurora, meteors, and those strange "fiery tears of the sky" which Ave term falling stars, announce over again that the realms of aerial space, all still and passive as they seem, are yet realms of unresting life. The very substance of the earth is ever-moving; the interior is incessantly in- ducing changes upon the exterior ; waves of motion are con- tinually passing through, indicated by the sinking of the land in some parts of the globe, and its rising in others, so that old beaches are left inland, and old high-water marks sunk far out at sea; hot springs, volcanoes, earthquakes, attest more vehemently still what agitation there is below. " Could we obtain daily news of the state of the whole of the earth's crust," continues the author of KosMOS, " we should in all probability become convinced that some point or other of its surface is constantly shaken." Yet all these greater movements of the earth's substance are but stupendous analogues of movements as incessantly going on among its elements — visible, acknowledged movements. What life is there in crystallization ! What energy in combustion ! What vivacity in effervescence! True, some of them are of brief duration, if we look only at a particular scene of their dis- play; but taking the total of the world, they are unremit- ting. Even in a given spot, they may be indefinitely pro- longed, like the ever-burning fire of the Vestal Virgins, pro- vided sufficient supply of their needful fuel be kept up. A-niiTal movement itself could not be continued were sup- E« 106 MOTION, A FIRST PRINCIPLE OF BEAUTY. plies of what it depends on to be withlield. Collectively, these movements express, as we have before styled it, the Life of inorganic nature. Under the im]Dulse of the sustain- ing and influencing energy of the Creator, every atom of matter is full of moving life; the history of every particle is a history of change, and that of the Avorld an ever-begin- ning, never-concluding metamorphosis. 58. The moving of water is peculiarly like life. Hence the continual application to streams and fountains, by elegant minds, of the terms which pertain primarily to their own nature. The basins at the Crystal Palace, it is announced, are to be "alive with fountains and jets;" the river here, says the author of Coningsby, w'as " clear but for the dark sky it reflected, narroAV and winding, but full of life." Corinne's delight was in "the fount of Trevi, whose abundant cascade falls in the centre of Rome, and seems the life of that tran- quil scene." Virgil has fiumine vivo, "in the living cur- rent;" Ovid, e vivis fontibus, "from the gushing fountains." Oersted devotes an entire chapter to the Life of the Fountain, a chapter as elegant in narrative as the principle arrived at is important. He shows us that while motion is the begin- ning of life, it is likewise the first principle of Beauty. "'What a rich variety of inward activity we beheld," he concludes, "in that fountain! Were this to be separated from it, all besides would leave but a faint impression. That which is full of life arouses it in ourselves, and this feeling of life appertains to the complete enjoyment of beauty. An attempt to represent it in painting, if it were executed in a masterly manner, might in some degree please the eye; but the enjoyment which arises from the peculiar nature of the object would be much diminished, because motion, lustre, and the play of light can never be represented in a picture, I have several times seen pictures of fountains, but the im- pression they produced upon me was poor." To give in THE SEA AND THE CLOUDS. 107 painting a sufficient idea of the ocean, to paint even rain or falling snow, is well known to be an equally fruitless effort, while nothing is easier than to sketch a still expanse of flooded fields, which, for the same reason, are unattractive and uninteresting, and incapable of exciting ideas of beauty. These, as so lucidly set forth by the accomplished Dane, we can realize only when movement is either present or forcibly implied, . and thus only where the idea of life is secretly placed before the soul, which loves it, and hungers for it, and is depressed Avhen there is none to be seen, because of its own innate, burning activity. How beautiful the waving of the trees, and the quiver of the leaves before the wind l""' With what delight do we watch the gliding of the clouds across the sky, the heaving of the sea. The river rushing o'er its pebbled bed. Why are Ave never tired of looking upon the ocean? From land-scenery, however charming, after a while, the eye turns away, deliberately and content; the vSea, on the other hand, holds the whole soul in immortal fascination. The meadows and ferny lanes, even the woodland glades of perfect Spring, sheeted Avith the Avild blue hyacinth, and sparkling with the crimson lychnis, even at that earlier sweet season, Avhen the trees, though they have leaves upon them, give no shade to the chaste anemones, we can quit satisfied; but the beach, though it offer nothing but high-water mark of Avithered wrack, Ave never turn aAvay from Avithout reluctance. As in a glass Ave see our features reflected, so in the mov^ement of the waves, and their sound, Ave recognize an image of our * HoAV largely the movement of trees contributes to their pictu- resque, may be seen in Gilpin, Avho indicates more than once the fulness, as well as the nicety of his appreciation of its A^alue. Forest Scetiery, 108 MOTION AND EEPOSE COMPLEMENTARY. life. So with the movements, though silent, of the clouds, as, massively dark or softly brilliant, their swelling moun- tains change, unite, separate, and unite again, unveiling in- finite depths of calm, sweet azure, or if it be sunset, fields of clear, burning brightness that seem to reach into heaven itself. Looking at the clouds merely as aqueducts, we miss the chief part of their beautiful ministry, which is to fill the sky with the idea of Life. Rhymesters and parlor na- turalists would have us believe the skies, to be perfectly beautiful, must be "cloudless." It is not only not true, but it would be contrary to the nature of things for it to be true. The skies even of Italy are not cloudless, except as in our own country, at certain periods, and derive their charm from their transparency rather than from cloudlessness. Clouds are to the heavens what human beings are to the earth. They dwell in them, and move about them, various in their aspect and their missions as men and women; and as of the latter come all the true dignity and grace of earth, so of the former comes every splendor that glorifies the sky. 59. Things even which are incapable of visible motion mainly acquire what beauty they may present from in some way referring us to it. We are so pleased, for instance, with the undulating outline of distant hills, because they unroll before the imagination the rising and falling of the waves, and thus transport us into the very presence of life's grandest emblem. There is no pleasure derived from the view of a mere flat extended plain, unless relieved by waving corn or the movement of animals. These being absent, everything seems to have subsided into stagnancy, and the pictured idea is death rather than life. We call it, without a libel, " a dead level." Even the shadows in still water, depending, as they do, on the most exquisite placidity of sur- face, are no exception, for they seldom so powerfully appeal as when the objects they depict are gently agitated by the REPOSE IN REFERENCE TO ART. 109 breeze. Feeling how important it is that life shonld thus be presented to the mind even in scenes of the profoundest repose, the poets rarely delineate such without introducing some delicate allusion that shall suggest it. Homines, volucresque ferasque Solverat alta qnies: nuUo cum murmure sepes ■ Immotseque silent frondes ; silet humidus aer ; Sidera sola micant. — (Ovid, 3fet., vii. 185-188.) " Men, birds, and animals lie dissolved in deep repose ; the mur- mur of the woods is hushed ; the leaves are motionless ; the humid air is still ; the stars alone twinkle." ISTot that motion is sufficient to excite ideas of beautj^; everywhere in nature there must be a combination of two separate ideas, complementary to each other, before we can realize satisfaction in the beholding; the second, in the pre- sent instance, being the idea of Repose, as we may easily perceive by considering the movements of animals, and more particularly, those of man. Swimming, flying, walk- ing, are graceful, and therefore pleasing, only when we gather from them ideas of Rest, such as are conveyed by that aspect of ease and security, resulting from a perfectly- felt balance, which characterizes them when unlaborious and unaffected. Attitudes, on the same principle, which com- mend themselves as peculiarly beautiful and graceful, though they seem to depend for their effect upon the exqui- site arrangement of the body and limbs, derive the half of it from their flowing, motion-hinting curves. 60. Repose is needful not only to physical beauty; it be- longs as largely to the finest attitudes of the spiritual life, and is the state in which the imagination is most exquisitely unfolded. All true genius recognizes this. Shakspere would not let the players "tear a passion to tatters." He directs thpm, "in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, 10 110 REPOSE IN REFERENCE TO ART. whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that will give it smoothness." "The turmoil, the battle, the tumult of the Iliad is accompanied by the repose of studied measure. Amid the carnage of men we see the gods tranquil spectators, and when they are in the conflict, Achilles rests." So in Art. The same beautiful combination of action and repose in nature which reflects from the verses of the poet, is the foremost quality of the best efforts of the painter and the sculptor. The noblest and loveliest statues are those Avhose pui-e white marble is consecrated not more to life's emotions than to Repose. CHAPTER VII 61. The cessation of the vital activities is Death, which, though commonly spoken of as an actual existence, is simply another name for discontinuance. All forms recipient of life die some time. Some few may be privileged to survive the rest, even for thousands of years, as happens with certain trees, but the same death which in regard to the children of men, while it surprises many, skips not one, at last over- powers the most tenacious. "Come like shadows, so de- part," is the law of the entire material creation, in fact, as great a law as that it lives. For death is no accident of nature, neither is it in the least degree punitive. It is an essential and benevolent part of the very idea of material existence, bound up with the original scheme and method of creation as completely as gravitation is. Things die, not because they have been sentenced to, judicially, the sentence being effectuated, as often supposed, by a change superin- duced upon their original constitution ; but because without death, nature could not endure. Birth, growth, and arriving at maturity, as completely imply decay and death as the source of a river implies the termination of it, or as spring and summer imply corn-fields and rea2:)ing. Hence, what- ever the vigor and the powers of repair that may pertain to any given structure, whatever resistance it may offer to the shocks of Ages, Time, sooner or later, dissolves it; careful, however, to renew whatever it takes away, and to convert, 111 112 DEATH IN CONNECTION WITH THE FALL. invariably, every end into a new beginning. There is not a grave in the whole circuit of nature that is not at the same moment a cradle. 62. That death was brought into the world by Adam, we by no means intend to deny. Nothing is more true. Let us rightly understand, however, what kind of death it was. For death is no unitary thing; there are as many ways of dying as of living. Death commonly so called it certainly was not. Scripture, the supposed authority for the popular belief, rarely speaks of jjJiysiccd death. It uses the language of the material world, but intends spiritual ideas. Concern- ing itself primarily and essentially with the soul of man, what it has to say about his body is but casual. Only in purely biographical notices, as when it is said of Joseph that " he died an hundred and ten years old," and in some few such texts as "it is appointed unto all men once to die," is physical death ever alluded to, or even compatible with a just and practical interjoretation. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," was not a threat that corporeal death should be inflicted; it signified that, break- ing the commandment, he who had it given him, should lose the high, lovely life which is union with God, and sink into irreligiousness, which is infelicity and disquiet. He died to the true life of the spirit the moment that he tasted ; but as to his material body, he continued as he was before. "He begat sons and daughters, and lived nine hundred and thirty years." Equally unscriptural and groundless is the notion that physical death was even an appendix to the "punish- ment." Adam would have died had he never fallen, and so would all of his jDosterity, though none, perhaps, would have died of disease. Death probably would have resembled sinking into an easy and gentle slumber, such as overtakes us when agreeably fatigued ; it would have been that eutha- nasia to all men which Augustus Csesar used so passionately TESTIMONY OF GEOLOGY. 113 to desire, and wliich is so beautifully predicated of the Christian in a well-known and lovely hymn : — So fades a summer cloud away, So sinks the gale, when storms are o'er. So gently shuts the eye of day. So dies a wave along the shore. If the ' Fall bore in any way on physical death, it was in leading to the sensualities which often hurry it on with pain ; and to the violations of the laws of peace and order which make so much of it unhappy and untimely. It is absolutely needful that man should die as to his material body, in order that he may rise into his eternal dwelling. He has faculties which cannot possibly be developed here, and which can only expand in heaven, or under purely spiritual con- ditions, so that it is only by dying that he can become truly himself. 63. What Scripture really tells us, is that physical death was not brought into the Avorld by Adam ; and the testimony of the inspired volume is supported by the incontestable evidence of science. Geology proves that the world had been familiar with death for ages before mankind Avas placed upon it; every fossil in the museums of palaeontology is a voucher that mortality and human sin neither had nor pos- sibly could have the least connection ; to suppose otherwise, is to place the effect before the cause. It is a simple evasion to say, in order to reconcile the geological teaching, that it was only man who became subject to death through his moral defection; and that geology does not object to this doctrine. Geology knows but of a single law of life and death.* Assuming, however, that no geological discoveries * See for the arguments set forth by upholders of the notion here repudiated, the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, vol. 4, p. 317. July, 1852. 10 ® 114 DEATH AND PROCREATION CONCURRENT. had ever been made; assuming that no fossil shell or skele- ton had ever been dug up, and that the pre-Adamic condi- tion of the globe were still a secret ; the very history of the creation of animals and plants, in the gateway of the Bible, is sufficient to show that physical death is proper and con- genital to nature. The command given both to animals and man to "be fruitful and multiply," implies the removal of successive races by death ; otherwise the world would long- since have been overstocked; plants, for their part, are de- scribed as created "yielding seed," which carries with it the same inevitable consequence. The produce of so minute a creature as a fly would, if unchecked, soon darken the air, and render whole regions desolate; tlie number of seeds ripened by a single poppy, were they all to grow and be fruitful in their turn, would in a few years suffice to clothe a continent. Of course it is easy to object, as done by a certain class of reasoners, that this might have been cor- rected by a supplementary "miracle," but to evade fair philosophical deductions by inventing and ascribing miracles where none are spoken of and none are wanted, is as weak as it is irreverent. God does not perform his work so im- perfectly or short-sightedly as to be obliged to interpose with miracles to set it right ; nor are we at liberty to speculate on the possibility of something supernatural in order to escape our difficulties, when to industry and patience nature itself is sufficient. Death, if not an absolutely necessary and inalienable counterpart to procreation, or being fruitful and multiplying ; is at least a concomitant of every scene of pro- creation that the world contains, whether animal or vege- table : there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the animals and plants now existing are dissimilar to the first individuals of their respective species, but every reason to believe that they resemble in all points, and thus in the power of procreating their like: hence may we be assured CAUSES OF DEATH. 115 that with the creation of organized beings came also the limitation of their life. Mankind could be no exception to the rule, as Eve was created before the Fall, and the nuptial benediction pronounced upon herself and consort. 64. The supposition that physical death was introduced by human sin, requires our first parents to have been invul- nerable: No moral state, hoAvever exalted, could possibly ■exempt a race of organized be'.ngs such as man, however few in number, and though inhabiting the fairest and safest of material worlds, from the casual injuries of which organi- zation, from its very delicacy, is susceptible. The same fire by which Adam " unfallen," must be supposed able to have warmed himself, would have burned him had he approached too near. Had he fallen from a tree, he was in no less dan- ger of a broken limb than ourselves ; had he struck his foot against a stone, he would have been no less easily bruised or cut. From such injuries, he would probably have reco- vered with an ease and rapidity which our present viti- ated state of body debars us from conceiving, though faintly memorialized in the ready cure of the child and the tempe- rate man compared with the tedious and uncertain one of the drunkard ; but that he was not liable to them cannot for an instant be supposed, and if liable to them at all, of course he was susceptible of injuries terrible enough to kill. The more exquisite the capacity for life, always the readier is the liability to injury, as the eye, which holds the highest ofiice in the empire of sense, is the organ most easily hurt and lost. 65. Death has its proximate causes, and its remote causes. The remote causes are thousand-fold ; they are connected, directly and indirectly, with every solid and fluid in the body, and will only be determined, therefore, when patho- logy shall have become a perfect science. Every organ, and member, and tissue, is a possible threshold of death, and there is not one by which it may not enter unawares. 116 CAUSES OF DEATH. Our life contains a thousand springs, And ends if one start wrong ; Strange that a harp of thousand strings Should keep in tune so long ! The proximate causes, on the other hand, are few, and easily understood, being resolvable into the negation of these grand fundamental processes of life Avhich have been described in the preceding chapters. Reduced to their smallest denomination, we saw that the processes in question are the Assimilation of food, and the Respiration of atmo- spheric air. The former we found to have for its main ob- ject, the nourishment of the blood, the organ with which that fluid is pre-eminently identified being the heart. Re- spiration we also found concerned with the blood, but iden- tified peculiarly with the lungs. To facts, accordingly, con- nected with one or other of these two organs, death, like life, is in all cases proximately referable. We die, proximately, either because the blood has lost energy and volume, or be- cause atmospheric air is insufficiently admitted to it. Po- pularly regarded, death consists simply in loss of breath; and founded as the common idea is, upon external appear- ances, it is not improper thus to speak of it. It always has been, and always will be right to speak of things in our common converse as they apjoear to the senses. We should always seek to think with the philosopher — to understand what is the genuine truth — but in our ordinary intercourse with one another in daily life, it is proper and expedient to speak of things as they seeyn ; to say, for example, of the sun, that it " rises." So in the case of the dying. Here, to appearance, the breath only is concerned. The breath, ac- cordingly, do we alone take note of, and further, in truth, we need not look. Whatever terrible disease may be ra- vaging the frame ; v/hatever paral)^sis may hold the organs of sense and locomotion in deadly torpor — if there be " WHILE THERE IS BREATH, THERE IS LIFE." ll'i' Breathing, we know that all is not over yet. " While there is life, there is hope," is only a paraphrase of — while there is breath, there is life. The primary cause of death may date from years before ; it may baffle all physicians and physiology to determine ; but in the final one there is no enigma. 'Tis the cessation of breath ; Silent and motionless we lie, And no one knoweth more than this. I saw our little Gertrude die ; She left off breathing, and no more I smooth'd the pillow beneath her head. She was more beautiful than before. Like violets faded were her eyes. By this we knew she was dead. Through the open Avindow looked the skies Into the chamber where she lay. And the wind was like the sound of wings. As if angels came to bear her away. Wedded to pictures and external shows of things, and inaj)t to rise from the merely symbolical representations to the holy presence of the thing signified, Pagan antiquity deemed that the breath was the very life itself. So per- suaded were they of the identity, that they even thought that by inhaling the last sighs of their dying friends, to suck the fleeting spirit into their own bodies. Many beauti- ful allusions to this occur in the poets: Anna, lamenting over Dido, exclaims as she expires, "And ah! let me catch it with my mouth, if there be yet any stray breath about her lips !" A collection of the references may be seen, in Kirchman, who, in his little book, De Funeribus Romanorum, devotes a chapter to the superstitions this people connected with the breath of the dying. The elegy of Bion on Adonis contains one of such far higher beauty than any of the Roman poets afford, that it is surprising he makes no mention of it, 118 THE BLOOD THE ESSENTIAL SEAT OF DEATH. "Eousethee a little, Adonis, and again tliis last time kiss me! Kiss me just so far as there is life in thy kiss ; till from thy heart thy spirit shall have ebbed into my lips and my soul, and I shall have drained thy sweet love-potion, and drunk out thy love ; and I will treasure this kiss, even as it were Adonis himself." 66. While legitimate to speak of death as "ceasing to breathe," we must remember, therefore, that breathlessness is only a part of the idea of death. Ordinarily the circula- tion goes on a little longer, requiring, if death is to be affi- liated on a single event, that it be referred to the heart rather than to the lungs. Slowly and sadly does the blood consent to death ; like the tenderness of woman, its ministra- tion is first and last in the history of life; that which was our safety, and stronghold, and delight in our noon-day vigor, in our sunset is still sedulous and faithful. O my love ! my wife ! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath. Upon thy beauty yet hath had no power : Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks. And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Both ideas are right in their own province and connection. It is true that the heart is the last to die ; it is true that the ceasing to breathe is death. The question to be answered is simply, how is death most truly signified, and in what for- mula of words is it most accurately described. Here, we have already seen, there is no mystery. That which in death arrests the attention of the bystander, and tells only too surely that all anxieties and cares are over, is the ex- ternal, visible circumstance, the ceasing to breathe, not the invisible, secret circumstance of the blood ceasing to move; and thus, though the latter may be last in point of time, the former is death ostensibly ; and this is sufficient to vin- dicate the expressions summed up in "the breath of life," the synonym in all ages of vitality. A true idea, of the CHOLERA, 119 cause of death will of course include both circumstances ; whichever occurs first, the other is sure to folloAV almost im- mediately, just as they are themselves inevitably brought on, though less rapidly and directly, by the stopj)age of any other of the vital flinctions. 67. Essentially, then, death is the devitalizing and disor- ganizing of the Blood. We showed, when speaking of food, that it is from the blood that every tissue and organ of the body is constructed and repaired ; and that as these are con- tinually wasting away, there is a proportionate demand made upon the fountain from Avhich alone they are renew- able. It is obvious that if the needful supply of food for the blood be withheld, the blood itself must diminish and lose in virtue. It becomes too much reduced to circulate vigorously, and to meet the demands of the wasted tissues, and the body gradually withers away. This is most obvi- ously shown in the lingering and miserable death induced by starvation. But it is common also as the result of cer- tain diseases, which prevent the digestive organs from assi- milating a sufficient amount of food to maintain the required quantity and quality of the vital fluid. To deficiencies of this nature may be referred an endless variety of morbid affections, one disease springing from another, as sickness from drinking of poisoned wells. So with death proximately connected with the oxygenation of the blood. If the natural power of breathing be so affected, whether by disease of the respiratory organs, or by mechanical hindrance, as to pre- vent the inspiration of air in sufficient quantity to supply the needful oxygen, the balance of action between the heart and lungs is upset, and death ensues as surely as in the former case. In cholera, according to one theory of this direfiil malady, although the blood circulates freely, and the patient breathes as in health ; from some unknown cause connected with the nervous system, the blood fails to 120 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH. become aerated. The discoloration of the body is attributed to its su]per-carbonized condition.* Not without reason then, has the blood always been famous, and regarded as the very seat of life. Blood and the life have in all ages been con- vertible terms, and justly. In Hades, says Homer, "the shades can neither speak, nor recognize the living, except they first drink blood." But it does not appear ever to have been used as a name for life. This has been the prero- gative of the Air, just as the human race, though born of woman, and nourished by her, is jDroudly called Man. The only approach to such use is in such phrases as to " shed blood," meaning to kill ; and calling death by the name of " the sword." An oath with the ancient Scythians was " by wind and sword," meaning "by life and death." The dignity which has in all ages been connected with Red, as a color, probably owes its ascrijDtion, in part at least, to the sanctity of that of which blood is the chief sign and emblem. 68. Violent deaths similarly come either of arrested cir- culation, as in the case of bleeding to death, and death by lightning; or of arrested respiration, as m strangulation, stifling, and suffocation by drowning, or by inhaling noxious vapors, such as the fumes of charcoal. A violent blow on the head, affecting the brain ; or upon the stomach, affecting the ganglionic centres, although unattended by fracture, kills by the shock to the nervous system, which is instanta- neously followed by stoppage both of the circulation and the breathing. Both of these great functions of course require that the nervous system shall be in good order, and * Cholera, say others, appears to kill by separating the serum and the crassamentum of tlie blood. The former runs off by the bowels ; the latter clogs the minute vessels, and causes the discoloration. Assuming this to be the true theory, it is a no less beautiful illustra- tion that death is induced by the rupture of a complementary dualism. PROXIMATE CAUSES OF DEATH. 121 thus, in tracing death to its profounder causes, we find that we cannot sto]D till in the presence of that raighty sphynx, the Brain, the fountain of nervous energy to the whole body. What the lungs and heart are to the blood, the lungs and brain are to the nervous fluid, which circulates through the nerves as the blood does through the veins, coexistent and coextensive with it. Any irregularity in the stream, however it may be caused, is attended of course by analogous evils to the system. Denied by some, the exist- ence of this fluid admits nevertheless of demonstration, both from analogy, and by inductions founded on experience. It exists and acts according to laws similar to those which regulate the existence and action of the blood, of which it may be regarded as a higher and more exquisite species. The following table of the proximate causes of death is kindly furnished me by my friend, Dr. Henry BroAvne, of the Manchester Koyal School of Medicine. It will be seen that he at once recognizes the great division that has been adverted to ; and in the spirit of true philosophy, reconciles what in different authors appear to be conflicting views, though essentially the same. By BicHAT to the Heart — Death is traced -{ Head (Nervous System) Ltjngs- By Watson to — Anaemia (BloodUssness) /'Asthenia-'''^ {Strengthless7iess) By Alison to the —r Heart. (Asphyxia or Pulselessness)* -Apncea Lungs.f 3rcathlessness) * The term asphyxia is often misapplied to breathlessness. Pro- perly, it denotes nothing more than the cessation of the pulse, o-^iifif. t See on the proximate causes of death, and its phenomena, as 11 F 122 TENACITY OF LIFE IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 69. Among the inferior animals death is referable to analogous, if not identical hindrances to the due perform- ance of the vital functions. Deprivation of food and air, violent shocks to the nervous system, especially where a brain is present, exposure to severe cold, are among the more frequent causes; one circumstance or another being more quickly and imminently fatal, according to the idiosyncracy of the species. As we travel towards the outermost circles of animal life, conditions which would speedily destroy a human being, a quadruped, or a bird, are borne, however, Avith astonishing indifference. It has often been observed of desperately wounded soldiers, who have nevertheless recovered, that while in most cases nothing is so soon destroyed as human life, in others there is nothing- harder to dislodge. Applied to many of the smaller races of the animal world this almost becomes a rule. To say nothing of those extraordinary animalcules which, accord- ing to the experiments of Spallanzani,* may be dried into mummies, kept indefinitely in that state, and then revived ; creatures even so large as insectsf are in many cases nearly proof against the ordinary agents of vital overthrow- Several extraordinary instances of this may be read in that amusing work "Episodes of Insect Life," vol. ii., pp. 162- above briefly set forth, the excellent Outlines of Physiology and Pathology of Dr. Alison. Eclinbui-gh, 1833. * Tracts upon the Nature of Animals, vol. 1, p. xxxvi., &c. f Insects are commonly cited to express ideas of smallness. But to innumerable creatures they are what whales and elephants are to ourselves. The animal which liolds the middle place in the scale of size, reckoning from the Monas erepusculum, the minutest to which our microscopes have yet reached, is the common house-fly. That is, there are as many degrees of size between the house-fly and the Monas, reckoning downwards, as, reckoning upwards, there are be- t^veen the house-fly and the whale. CAUSES OF DEATH IN PLANTS. 123 167, &c. It is worthy of note that these latter creatures, like reptiles, can better endure intense heat than intense cold, of which they always stand in dread. Tenacity of life is wonderfully exhibited also in the tortoise family, and in toads, which appear to be capable of living in a state of torpidity for very considerable periods. The stories how- ever, so common m newspapers, of their leaping out of stones when suddenly broken in tAvo, and out of timber when being sawn, seem to be none of them sufficiently authenticated. Many naturalists positively deny that it ever occurs. Experiments made by Dr. Buckland led him to the conclusion that when totally secluded from the access of atmospheric air, these creatures cannot live a year, and that they cannot survive beyond two years if entirely pre- vented from obtaining food. 70. Death purely from old age, whether in man or the inferior animals, is of course not to be confounded with such as comes of accident or disease. Here it is induced by the gradual closing up of delicate vessels; the hardening and ossification of tissues; the languid and imjDerfect action of important organs. These changes promote others; by and bye some principal part becomes affected, and lastly, where present, the great dualism of heart and lungs. No creature can exist without these changes taking place in it, and superinducing, sooner or later, senility and dissolution. Agerasia belongs only to the soul ; this alone lives in f)er- petuity of youth. 71. In the Vegetable Kingdom, as in the Animal, death is the stoppage of the process which maintains life. Starva- tion, drought, exposure to intense frost, or to an atmosphere infected with acids and other obnoxious chimney -products, will arrest the functions of plant-life as effectually as the opposite conditions encourage them. Plants suffer the more sorely from such influences through their inability to move 124 DEATH IN THE INORGANIC WORLD. away from the place of danger. To compensate this, they are endowed with a tenacity of life far exceeding that of animals, or at least, of animals of equal rank. The stricken quadruped falls never to rise again ; the stricken plant buds anew in calm endurance. " There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch of it will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground ;• — ■ yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant." 72. In the mineral world, death is simply Decomposition. All bodies resolve into their elements at the time of death ; but whereas in plants and animals this occurs only as the result and supplement of death, in minerals death and de- composition are the same. Life, we must remember, is expressed in the mineral simply as chemical affinity; — no functions take place in it; death accordingly, consists simply in the setting aside of that affinity. Some stronger affinity coming into operation from without, one or more of the constituent elements is drawn away, and the substance ceases to exist. No mere melting, or crushing, or pulverizing, or modelling by the hands of Art, affects the life of a mineral. Though a piece of marble be ground into impalpable powder, the atoms are living marble still; every fragment is still animated by the life which holds together its component lime and carbonic acid; the minutest particle as completely represents and embodies the nature of the original mass as a drop of spray from the advancing wave does that of the sea. Such at least is it to the eye of the chemist. To the unversed in his magical science, demolition is annihilation, and in a limited sense, it is not erroneous thus to regard it. Put side by side, the compact and solid stone naturally speaks more of life than the mere heap of scattering dust; the one preserves the chiselled writing of forty centuries, the RUSKIN ON INORGANIC LIFE. 125 other disappears with the first curl of wind. Hence it is that in Scripture, dust is the common name for what is unvitalized or dead; wliile Stone or Eock, which give the highest possible idea of solidity and permanence, characters the very opj)osite to those of dust, are the equally common appellations of the Fountain of Life. Mr. Ruskin explains these beautiful metaphors on the principle that with consoli- dation we naturally connect the idea of purity, and Avith disintegration that of foulness. "The j^urity of the rock," says he, " contrasted with the foulness of dust or mould, is expressed by the epithet 'living,' very singularly given to the rock in almost all languages." Doubtless there is a truth in this, for life and purity, both in the physical and the moral world, are correlative, but as Mr. Ruskin himself acknow- ledges in the next sentence, the deeper reason is the coherence of the i^articles in the stone, and their utter disunion in the case of the dust. The page is well worth turning to, not merely for the philosophic views on the general subject of inorganic life, but for the admirable commentary on the text that "pureness is made to us so desirable because expressive of the constant presence and energizing action of the Deity in matter, through which all things live, and move, and have their being; and that foulness is painful as the accompani- ment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the withdrawal of Divine support."* Neither consolidation nor purity are at all times intended in this remarkable epithet. In Virgil, for example: — Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibiis antrum ; Intus aquse dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo. Nympharum domus. — {jEn&id i. 16-18.) " Opposite is a cave, the retreat of the wood-nymphs, formed by over-hanging rocks ; inside are limpid waters, and seats of limny stone." "" Modern Painters, vol. ii., pp. 73-75. 11 * 126 THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS. What then shall be the meaning here ? At first sight there is none. But when we bethink ourselves that the cool, hu- mid atmosphere of such sweet natural summer-houses and grottoes as the poet describes, causes every surface upon which the light can fall to clothe itself with green and most delicate moss, in an instant the words become animated and picturesque, we hear the trickling waters, and feel ourselves sheltering from the fervid noonday sun, each great stone a living cushion for our repose. The characteristic of true poetry is, that by single words thus artlessly introduced, it awakens all the most beautiful memories and associations of the heart. 73. Hitherto we have spoken of inorganic compounds. The life of the simijle substances, the fifty or sixty primitive elements, or as-yet-undecompounded bodies, is much less precarious. When, under chemical agency, a compound is broken up, though the mass ceases to be, the constituents are in no wise affected. As in the crowding together of a multitude of men for some great social or political object, though it is the assemblage which attracts our attention, every member of it has an interior, unnoticed life of his own, so is it with the several elements which in combination form the acid or the salt. The compound has one life, the elements have another ; and as the individuals which com- pose the meeting live on, though the meeting itself dissolves and dies Avith the conclusion of the business that brought it together, so do the simple elements of destroyed compounds ; they separate, not to perish, but to enter upon new activi- ties. Though several even of the most solid of the simple substances may, under the influence of heat, be volatilized and altogether dissipated, zinc and potassium for instance among the metals, no one can say that any one of these substances is destructible absolutely. No one can assert that like iodine vaporized and condensed in a Florence flask, or THE PRIMITIVE ELEMENTS. 127 like camphor in a glass jar (which evaporates only to de- scend again in glittering frost-work), they do not consolidate afresh. That they would do so we should certainly expect, though it is quite as likely that when so attenuated, new changes and decompositions come into process, causing them to return to the eyes of men in the form of some other " pri- mitive element ;" for, as we saw in our second chapter, it is not only possible, but extremely probable, that all the so- called primitive elements are but different presentations of two fundamental ones, their respective atoms being variously associated, and giving us oxygen, gold, silex, &c., in turn, according to the nature of the union. For anything we can tell, the identical oxygen, gold, silex, &c., of the primaeval world, are still in being, though in the course of ages they may have undergone innumerable vicissitudes. For aught we know, on the other hand, the primaeval gold, silver, &c., may in great measure have perished, and as many repro- ductions have occurred in the secret but mighty laboratory of inorganic nature, as there have been procreations of plants and animals in its organic realm. CHAPTER VIII. THE VAUIOVS IjEA.SJES of IjIFE. 74. Though death is the universal end, nothing is more curiously varied than the Lease of existence. The present chapter will be devoted to the consideration of what is cer- tainly one of the most interesting mysteries in the economy of life — the question, why do things live for determinate periods ? We do not mean, why do certain individuals die earlier than others of their kind, as when infants and young people are removed by death ; but why does the ordmary maximum of age vary so immensely in regard to the differ- ent species of things ; why do some come to maturity and perish in less than a year, while others endure for three, four, ten, twenty, a hundred, even for thousands of years ? For that the duration of the different species of animals and plants is thus determinate, is certain ; every one of them has a lease of life peculiar to itself, though true that in the greater part the exact term remains yet to be ascertained. Did we know the minute history of horse and lion, thrush and pelican, antelope and red-breast ; were we intimately acquainted with the natural constitution of each brute and bird, the duration of the different species of the organized creation would unquestionably alloAV of being tabulated as exactly as the daily rising and setting of the sun. AVe might anticipate such a fixity of duration from the deter- minate character of everything else which concerns living beings. Every species of animal and plant has its deter- 12S FIXED LEASES OF LIFE UNIVERSAL. 129 miuate form, size, and organization ; the period of gestation, though it differs widely in the aggregate of the animal king- dom, is invariably the same in the same species ; similarly, the growing of seeds, which is vegetable incubation, and the period of the floAvering of plants, are in any given species uniformly the same ; it is but reasonable then to expect that there are definite leases of existence, and observation proves the opinion to be well-founded. Under hostile conditions, the allotted periods of duration may doubtless be greatly shortened, as experience shows us every day, while under favorable ones they may sometimes be surprisingly extended. As in the human species, mortality cuts down myriads before puberty, while now and then we are called to Avonder at an Old Parr, so in all other tribes of being, though the unusual longevity is perhaps never so great in proportion. Making all allowance for such exceptions, and giving everything fair judgment, it still comes true that there is a fixed lease which the mass of the healthy individuals of the species attain, and beyond which the life of the mass is seldom prolonged. Whether all or any living things at present reach, even in exceptional cases, the full term of life originally allotted to their race, it is impossible to know — the probability would seem that few, perhaps none, reach their intended maximum, except an individual here and there. That individuals do sometimes prodigiously outlive their generation, certainly does not seem explicable on any supposition but that in the longffivals the native capacity is fully realized. We ought perhaps to consider enormous ages less as exceptions to the rule than as revelations of the lease with which the species is potentially gifted by the Almighty. Thus, if a certain percentage of mankind live to a hundred and fifty, and a certain percentage of horses to sixty, are not these ages to be esteemed the terms respectively prescribed in the begin- ning? Very little is yet known with certainty as to the F * 130 WIDELY VARYING LEASES OF LIFE. periods of life ordinarily attained. Beyond some broad, general peculiarities in the larger classes of living things, and tolerably correct statistics respecting the animals man is most familiar with, and the shortest and longest lived plants, scarcely anything precise has yet been arrived at. The literature of natural history is almost barren upon the subject; physiologists generally dismiss it in a paragraph. Buffon is the most copious in detached observations ; the best summary, brief though it be, is contained perhaps in the admirable and celebrated little treatise of Hufeland.* The recently published work of the eminent Parisian savant FlourenSjf to which attention has been so largely attracted in intelligent circles, sets forth a masterly doctrine on the relation between the period of attaining maturity and the duration of life, amending the well-knoAvn theory of Buffon, and jDlacing it on a sound physiological basis ; but in other respects it has little really new. The whole subject is thus in its infancy. The profounder and more interesting ques- tion, or part of the question, namely, why the divine lease of life varies so widely; why, for example, the rabbit is ordained to live for only eight years, while the dog is al- lowed to run on to twenty-four ; why the wheat-plant fruits and dies in a few months, while the cedar is appointed to watch the lapse of centuries ; this appears Avholly untouched, probably from its involving a spiritual idea, usually the last to be considered, though the first in importance and illu- minating power. That there is a reason for the various duration of life, we may be sure ; there can be nothing acci- * The Art of Prolonging Life, excellently edited, in one volume, by Erasmus Wilson, 1853. f On Human Longevity, and the amount of Life upon tlie Globe. From the French, by Charles Martel, 1855. NO LEASES IN THE MINERAL KINGDOM. 131 dental or capricious about it ; what that reason may be, is a magnificent problem for Christian philosophy. 75. The question applies of course only to organized beings, at least in its fulness. In minerals, for reasons already amply stated, duration is altogether irregular and indeterminate. Ruled wholly by contingencies, no scale of existence can be drawn up with regard either to simple or to compound bodies. It cannot be said that the diamond averages so many years; gold so many more; flint so many less. The same with any composite substance, as a lump of marble, or a mass of common salt; it lives as long as it is not assailed by the particular chemical agencies which would decompose it, and which nothing in the substance itself can repel : it is liable to them from the first moment of its exist- ence, and may thus be extinguished in an hour, or enjoy a kind of immortality, conditional on its seclusion from them. How vast the antiquity of many a little pebble, yet how slender the tenure of its existence, which a few drops of acid would overthrow in as few minutes! It is to be observed, however, that, as if in prefiguration of the higher kingdoms of nature — a beautiful subject, hereafter to be illustrated at length — in the more exquisite and delicate developments of the mineral world, or crystals, there are species that actually seem subject to a kind of natural and organic dissolution. After arriving at what may be esteemed a kind of maturity, certain crystals decompose, (of course under the influence of new conditions at variance with those under which they were formed,) and decaying, give curious skeletons of what they were in the bloom of their existence. Such relics are found in mines, often with crystals of difierent composition forming amid the ruins of the extinct one, just as on the shoulders of an ancient oak we may sometimes see sapling trees of other species, the products of seeds carried thither by some bird or wafting wind, and which have fat- 132 LEASE OF LIFE IN PLANTS, tened on its decaying heart. Vary tlie text-word to suit the especial theme, and there is no part of creation to which those fine philosophic verses of Pope's will not apply : — See dying vegetables life sustain, And life dissolving, vegetate again ; All forms that perish, other forms supply; By turns we catch the vital breath, and die. There is no essential difference between the violent death of the crystal in the laboratory of the chemist, and the quasi- natural in the mine; only in the latter the idea of deter- minate duration seems first to reveal itself. 76. To obtain clear and comprehensive ideas respecting the duration of life, it is requisite that a tolerable acquaint- ance should be formed with the particular circumstances and phenomena of vital action, also with a fair number of the species of things. No true advance can be made in any department of the philosophy of nature while we rest in such generalities as beasts, birds, and fishes ; we must learn species minutely and accurately, watching them from season to season, and from year to year, and penetrating, as far as possible, into their anatomy. None are better for this pur- pose, or so good, as our own common native plants, and wild animals, winged and wingless, with which we can so readily become familiar, and ignorant of which no one can pretend to the name of naturalist. With such knowledge in hand, the further steps can be taken pleasantly and safely, but not before. We shall consider, primarily, the phenomena connected with the duration of life in the Vege- table Kingdom, seeing that this is essentially the outline and prefigurement of the Animal, and thus the natural starting- point of all high physiological inquiry. 77. No one has entered Nature through its "gate Beauti- ful," the world of plants, without soon discovering that the LONGEVITY OF TREE.S. 133 duration of life is here of three general denominations. Some species are annual, or rather semi-annual, living from spring only to the close of the autumn of the same year ; others are biennial, living to the close of the second autumn, but never beyond it ; the greater part are perennial, or com- petent to live for a long series of years. Annuals include many of the commoner garden flowers and culinary vege- tables, as marigolds and lupines, peas and beans, which re- quire accordingly to be freshly raised from seed every season : biennials are likewise common in gardens: perennials com- prise all those plants which form the staple vegetation of a country, withering to a certain extent in the winter, and even dying down to the roots, but sprouting afresh with the return of spring; also the countless varieties of trees and shi'ubs, whether deciduous or ever-green. The perennials exhibit as great diversity in lease of life as the different species of animals. Some decay in as few as four or five years; others, often remarkable for their odoriferous and balsamic qualities, as sage, balm, and lavender, endure for ten or more; next come the larger and robuster kinds of shrubs, as rhododendrons and azaleas ; then such trees as are of rapid growth, and the substance of which is soft, as the poplar and willow; and lastly, those mighty, slow-growing, solid-wooded pillars of the forest, as the cedar and oak, at whose feet whole nations rise and fall.* "Noil hiemes illam, non flabra, neque imbres Convellunt; immota manet, multosque per aniios Multa viruni volvens durando secula vincit!" * There are olive-trees in the supposed garden of Gethsemane ■which have been estimated at two thousand years ; but these are probably mere descendants of those which are connected with the narratives of the Gospels, put forth originally as suckers from their roots, and thus to be regarded rather as restorations than as iden- tically the same. 12 124 DATA FOR ASCERTAINING AGES. How vast are the periods of life allotted to the longseval trees may be judged from the following list of ages known to have been reached by patriarchs of the respective kinds : — Cercis 300 years. Wahaut... 900 years. Elm 335 " Oriental Plane... 1000 " Ivy 450 " Lime 1100 " Maple 516 " Spruce 1200 " Larch 576 " Oak 1500 " Orange 630 " Cedar 2000 " Cypress 800 " Schubertia 3000 " Olive SOOf " Yew 3200 " Four and five thousand years are assigned to the Taxodium and the Adansonia, and Von Martins describes Locust-trees in the South American forests which he believes to have begun their quasi-immortality in the days of Homer. Whether or no, it may safely be asserted that the world possesses at this moment living memorials of antiquity at least as old as the most ancient monuments of human art. How grand and solemn is even the thought of a tree coeval with the pyramids of Egypt and the sculptures of Nineveh, yet still putting forth leaves, and inviting the birds to come and "sing among the branches!" Well might the old preacher of Alexandria discern in a tree the terrestrial image of heavenly truth. 78. The way in which the ages of these vegetable Nestors have been ascertained leaves no doubt of their correctness. In some few cases the data have been furnished by historical records, and by tradition; but the botanical archaeologist has a resource independent of either, and when carefully used, infallible. The whole subject of the signs and testi- monies of particular age is interesting, and deserves to be here dealt with, but unfortunately scarcely anything is yet known about it. The deficiency is much to be regretted 1, DATA FOR ASCERTAINING AGES. 135 seeing that it is often of serious importance to the interests of society that means should be possessed for determining the exact period of a given life. The most important of all, the data Avhereby the age of one of our own species may be determined, are as yet altogether undiscovered. Though long habits of social intercourse may enable us to guess pretty nearly, by the altered form of the features, wrinkles where once was smoothness, changes in the color and luxu- riance of the hair, also in the gait and general physical exterior, still it is only a guess; we cannot be sure until we have consulted the register or the family Bible. With the lower animals it is a little easier; the age of the horse, for instance, to about eight or nine years old, may be told by its teeth ; the horns of certain quadrupeds similarly announce their ages up to a given epoch; in birds the age may some- times be deduced from the wear and altered form of the bill ; in the whale it is known by the size and number of the lamina of " whale-bone," which increase yearly, and seem to indicate a maximum of three or four hundred years to this creature; the age of fishes appears to be marked on their scales, as seen under a microscope; and that of molluscous animals, such as the oyster, in the strata of their shells; still, there is no certain and connected knowledge in refer- ence to any but the first-named, and even this applies only to the youth of the animal. Of all the forms of nature, Trees alone disclose their ages candidly and freely. In the stems of all trees which have branches, that is to say, in all " Exogens," the increase takes place by means of an annual deposit of wood, spread in an even layer upon the surface of the preceding one. The deposits commence the first sum- mer of the tree's existence, and continue as long as it sur- vives; hence, upon taking a horizontal section of the stem, a set of beautiful concentric circles becomes visible, each circle indicating an annual deposit, and thus marking a year 136 VARIOUS RATE OF GROWTH IN TREES. in the biography of the general mass. So much for the felled tree; m the living and standing one of course the circles are concealed from view ; to learn their number here, therefore, some ingenuity is required. The simplest and most certain method is to burrow into the trunk with an instrument like an immense cheese-taster, which intersects every layer, and draws out a morsel of each, sufficiently dis- tinct for enumeration. Where this is not convenient, the age may be estimated by ascertaining, as nearly as possible, the annual rate of increase, then taking the diameter of the trunk at about a yard from the ground, and calculating by " rule of three." Thus, if in the space of an inch there be an average of five annual layers, a hundred inches will an- nounce five hundred years of life. The latter method requires to be used, however, with extreme caution, because of the varying rate of growth, both in individual trees, and in their different species. In the earlier periods of life, trees increase much faster than when adult; the oak, for instance, grows most rapidly between its twentieth and thirtieth years ; and when old, the annual deposits considerably diminish, so that the strata are thinner, and the rings proportionately closer. Some trees slacken in rate of growth at a very early period of life; the layers of the oak become thinner after forty, those of the elm after fifty, those of the yew after sixty. Unless allowance be made for this, and also for the irregular thickness of the layers, which vary both "with seasons and with the position of the tree in regard to the sun, errors are inevitable. The concentric circles are not equally distinct in the different kinds of trees; the best examples occur per- haps in the cone-bearers, as the fir, cedar, and pine. The opinion not mfrequently held, that the trees of cold and temperate countries show them better than those of the tropics, is, however, a mistaken one. Certainly there are equinoctial woods in which they are less decidedly marked PALM TREES. 16 i than in particular European species, but in others again they are plainer. Indistinctness and emphasis in the rings are phenomena independent of climate, being characteristic, in fact, of particular species, genera, and even families. There are trees which are altogether destitute of rings. These belong to the class called "Endogens," of which the noblest and typical form is the Palm. Here the sign of age is furnished by the scars or stumps of the fallen leaves, which are of enormous size, few in number, and produced only upon the summit of the lofty, slender, branchless trunk. A certain number of ncAv leaves expand every year, and about an equal number of the oldest decay, so that by taking the total of the scars, and dividing it by the average annual de- velopment of new leaves, a tolerable approximation may be come to. But it can rarely be relied upon ; it is a method indeed by no means universally practicable, the scars of the fallen leaves being very variable in their degree of perma- nence in different species. The fan-leaved palms preserve their scars only at the lowest part of the stem ; they lose them as they increase in age and height, so that from the middle to the top it is nearly bare. Sternberg says that the fossil Lepidodendra are the only j^lants in which the scars remain perfect throughout the entire length. Wood-sections, neatly cut and polished, so as to display the concentric circles, are highly ornamental objects, independently of their scientific instructiveness. A collection of specimens from the lopped boughs of the hedgerows and plantations, and from the timber-yard of the furniture-maker, where many rich exotics may be procured, rivals in beauty a cabinet of shells or fossils, and quite as abundantly rewards intelligent employment of the leisure hour. 79. Of the potential longevity of a tree or plant, a pretty fair estimate may be arrived at from a variety of circum- stances. For example, there are relations between the 12 « 1-j8 frl'itfulness in kelatton to longevity, duration of life and the quality of the fruit which plants produce. Those which give tender and juicy fruit, or at all events such trees as do this, are in general shorter-lived than those which yield hard and dry, and these are shorter-lived than such as produce only little seeds. The apple and the pear live shorter lives than nut-trees, which are out-lived in turn by the birch and the elm, as these are by the major part of the Coniferse, in which long-lived family there is probably not a species that does not flourish for at least a hundred years. The Alpine firs and larches frequently attain five centuries, and even the common red pine and the Scotch fir reach three to four. With a few exceptions, the seeds of the whole family are noticeably small, though the containhig cones may be of considerable size. One of the greatest trees in the Avorld, the Wellingionia gigantea of California, a member of this tribe, with an estimated maxi- ^ mum age of two thousand years, has a beautifully-formed but remarkably small cone, and seeds in proportion. Such trees as the birch, the elm, and the conifers, are useful to man for their timber, a service rarely rendered by the fruit- bearers. Trees again, that yield pleasant fruit, fit for human food, ordinarily live for shorter periods than those of which the produce is bitter and austere, and unserviceable to him as an edible. Most, if not all of the plants on which man in his civilized state depends for food, are exceedingly short- lived. The Cerealia or corn-producing plants, as Avheat, rice, barley, and oats, are annuals Avithout exception ; so are nearly all kinds of pulse. The large classes of esculent vegetables represented by the turnip, carrot, and cabbage, are also either annual or biennial. How much man has benefitted by this wise arrangement it is impossible to esti- mate. Did his daily bread grow on longseval trees, like acorns, asking no care and toil, the most efiicient means to his development would have been Avanting, as is still evi- BULK IN RELATION TO LONGEVITY. 139 denced in the lands of the cocoa-nut and banana ; but de- pending, as he has been so largely obliged to do, on annual plants, demanding incessant care, they may be gratefully regarded as the prime instrument of his rise in intelligence and morals. 80. The form or configuration of plants has most im- portant relations with their lease of life. Those trees usually live to the greatest age which attain the least vertical height in proportion to the diameter of their trunks, and the lateral spread of their branches. Size and substance have also to be taken note of. Small and attenuate plants almost always live for shorter periods than bulky ones, and tender and delicate species than the stout and hard-grained. The latter owe their longer lives, in a physiological point of view, to the abundance of firm, fibrous matter which enters into their composition, and without which it appears indeed impos- sible that any considerable age can be arrived at, thovigh there are instances where hard and durable wood is found in trees of briefer life than some that are soft-wooded. The lime-tree has softer wood than the walnut, beech, and pear, yet lives longer than either of them ; and the Baobab of Senegal, Avhich undoubtedly lives to a great age, though some of the accounts of it are probably exaggerated, is said to be so soft that it may be sliced with a knife. That bulk should be accompanied by long duration, it is easy to under- stand. The larger a plant or tree, the greater is the surface which it exposes to the atmosphere; and as it feeds by every leaf, the scope and opp)ortunity for the exercise of the vital functions is proportionately extended. The more leaves a tree can put forth, and maintain in healthy action, the firmer Ls its hold upon the future. VieAved in regard to their an- nual rejuvenescence, trees may be regarded as little worlds in themselves, — solid masses from which a multitude of separate and perfect plants is vernally put forth, every new 140 TEXTURE IN RELATION TO LONGEVITY. shoot and twig being exactly analogous to an annual that has risen from a seed. As the successive generations of plants fill the earth more and more with the seeds of life, and thus both maintain its actual richness in verdure and blossom, and enlarge its potential, in reference to years to come, so the annual crops of twigs and leaves that clothe the tree, by their re-action tend to consolidate and strengthen it. The more exuberant its fertility, the more does it aug- ment in energy of life, — picturing therein, one of the finest truths in our spiritual history; the soul energizes as it works. But extent of leafy surface Avill not of itself induce longevity. There are many annuals that develope an immense amount of leaf, as the gourd and the melon. In such plants, it is counteracted by their exceedingly rapid growth, and conse- quent want of solidity; for while too great a degree of solidi- fication of the tissues, whether in plants or animals, hinders their proper vital activity, especially those great processes on which life so eminently depends, namely, the free move- ment of the juices, — the other extreme, or a too lax and succulent texture, is no less surely fatal to stability and en- durance. Such texture is almost always found in the short- lived plants, coming, as in the gourd, of their rapid exten- sion, while firm, dense, and compact texture is fully as characteristic of the longsevals. Compare the wood of the yew and the box-tree with that of the soft, sappy black poplar, and the willows that "spring by the water-courses." Fungi, mushrooms, and toadstools, which, as regards their superterraneous portion, are the most raj^id in development of any plants, often reaching their full size in the course of a night, are also the loosest in texture, and the soonest and speediest to dissolve. Some decay in a few hours ; while none, perhaps, last longer than from seven to fifteen days, except- ing the perennial Polypori and their congeners, the life of which extends to several years. Beautiful specimens of CLIMATE AND LONGEVITY. 141 these last, of a rich and glossy brown, have been sent to me from New Brunswick, where they grow upon the birch and maple trees. 81. The distinction of annual, biennial, and perennial, in regard to the duration of plants, is liable to be affected by certain accidents, but the changes are never so great or so deeply-seated as for the principle of a fixed lease of life to be abnegated by them. An inhospitable climate will shorten the life of perennials to a single season, as happens with mignonette, which in Barbary is shrub-like, and with the Palma-Christi, which in India is a stately tree, though in England neither survives a year in the open air; on the other hand, unsuitable food, excess of wet, or any other cir- cumstance by which the flowering of the plant is retarded, will induce unaccustomed longevity. This brings us to the consideration of one of the greatest truths in the philosophy of nature, namely, that all living things exist, and feed, and grow, and gather strength, in order that they may propagate their race. Doubtless, things universally have their social uses to subserve, and to perform which they were originally created, and are sustained in their respective places by the Almighty; but all these uses have reference, essentially, to the great ultimate use of preserving the race extant upon the earth, and multiplying it indefinitely, seeing that in the maintenance and multijjlication without end of receptacles of His Life, consists the highest glory of God. This is the end and design not only of the physical, but even of the moral and intellectual uses performed by mankind towards one another, all of them tending, more or less directly, to promote and adorn it. However unconscious we may be of their influence and private agency, and however little Ave may feel ourselves to be personally identified with the result, the perpetuation of the race is at once the beginning and the end of all the feeling-s incident to our nature. What- 142 DEATH BALANCED BY REPRODUCTIOIS^. ever we may seem to ourselves to be working for, the secret aspiration of the heart is always Home and one's own fire- side, bright and sweet with filial conjugal afiection; every virtue, desire, and passion, that stirs the soul, may finally be referred hither; in a word, whatever is friendly to humanity, in any of its needs, whatever gives life and solidity to ex- istence, is a collateral means to reproduction, and was pur- posely introduced to aid it, and without such aid reproduc- tion would languish and at last fail. Why reproduction is the great end of physical existence, is found in its needful- ness as the counterpoise of Death. As the destiny of all things is to die, were there no means established for their replacement, the earth would soon become a desolate void; but through the magnificent law of procreation, nothing is ever extinguished, nor a gap ever caused that is not instantly filled up. Though Time slays and devours every individual in turn, whether animal or plant; by procreation the species is preserved perfect and immortal, the whole of nature un- changed and ever young. States fall, Arts fade, but Nature doth not die ! By the continual succession of beings, all exactly resembling- one another, and their parents and ancestors, the existence of any one of them is virtually maintained in perpetuity ; the balance and the relations of the different parts of nature are kept intact, and to philosophic view. Time itself, rather than the temporal, is the slain one. Thus looked at, with the eyes of a large philosophic generalization, all the indi- viduals of any given species that have ever existed, and all that have yet to come into existence, form but one great Whole ; the process of reproduction whereby they follow one another in the stream that unites the living representa- tives to the primajval Adam of the race, being only Nutri- tion on a grand and perennial scale. Every individual, so REPRODUCTION THE END OF LIFE. 143 long as it lives its little life, is the species in miniature, reproducing all its tissues as fast as they decay, through vital action and reaction, or marriage in its simplest form; conversely, the aggregate of the individuals, or the race, is as it were a single one, diffused over an immense area of time and country, and nourishing and regenerating itself by means of that highest and most complicated play of the marriage-principle which the word marriage popularly de- notes. Every man, for example, and every woman, con- sidered physiologically, is the human race in little, every- thing that belongs to the race being enacted, essentially and daily, in their individual bodies ; at the same moment every man and every woman is but as a molecule of one great Homo, now some six thousand ye^rs of age, and spread over the whole surface of the earth. 82, Feeding, growing, all the vital functions and phe- nomena of the earlier stages of life are to be regarded accordingly, as Nature's preliminaries to Reproduction. Every part of organic creation illustrates this, but in the plant it is seen in chief perfection, excepting only the but- terfly, in whose little life the history is epitomized. In the first or grub state, it is a creeping cormorant ; the alimentary organs greatly predominate, and growth is rapid. In the last or winged state, on the other hand, though it sips from a thousand blossoms, it takes little or no sustenance, the excess of intestinal canal has given Avay to the generative organs, Avhich now assume the mastery, and up to the time of its early death, influence almost exclusively its habits. Many kinds of butterflies cannot eat indeed, if they would, for they have no motdhs. Adorned in their bridal vestments, love and pleasure, as they flirt their painted fans, form the brief and brilliant pastime with Avhich they close' their days. The A¥inged state of the butterfly is what the period of flowermg is to jilants, and the reason why longer life is 144 PROLONGATION OF VEGETABLE LIFE. occasioned to plants by delay in flowering, as above alluded to, is that in the flowers are contained their organs of pro- creation. Hence until they have bloomed they must needs remain childless, or with the consummation of life unreal- ized and unattained. Procreation, or the production of seed, is made to actuate plants with a vital impulse so wonderful and so like the instinct of animals towards the same end, that no other name conveys an adequate idea of it; they prepare for the effectuation of it from the first moment of existence, and until they have accomplished their purpose, unless killed by intense cold, or sudden and absolute deprivation of nourishment, will keep their hold £»n life with a tenacity almost invincible. It may be taken as an axiom in vegetable physiology, that cceteris paribus, no plant dies a natural death till it has ripened seeds. If its life be endangered, by penury of food or mutilation, the entire vital energy of the plant concentrates itself in the production of a flower, it ceases to put forth leaves, and expends its whole force in efforts to secure progeny. This is strikingly exemplified in hot, dry gardens, and by sum- mer waysides, where, as if conscious of the impending danger, plants ordinarily of considerable stature, begin to propagate while scarcely an inch high. Delay in flowering, attended by prolonged life, is usually the result of excess of nourishment. Thus, if a plant grow in too luxurious, or too watery a soil, causing it to become unduly succulent, or if it be subjected to an atmosphere too warm for it, and thus unnaturally stimulated, instead of producing flowers, it "runs to leaf;" it passes into the condition of an over- fattened or pampered animal, and is similarly unfitted for the reproductive function ; and like the animal again, to re-enter upon it, must become deplethoric. No plant can suffer from phyllomania and be fruitful at the same moment. Diclinous plants, when growing in wet localities, are re- PROLONGATION OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 145 markable for the excess of male flowers over female. De- lay in flowering and consequent prolongation of life beyond the usual limit, also occur through insufficiency of nourish- ment, and want of kindly climatic aid. Many plants live longer in our gardens than in their native countries simply for want of the encouragement to blossom which they are accustomed to at home. In Mexico the great American Aloe comes into bloom when four or five years old, and then dies, while in England it drags a kind of semi-torpid exist- ence for so long before the flowers appear, that it is a pro- verb for a hundred years' preparation. Some plants may have their lives prolonged a little while by nipping off" the flowers as soon as they begm to fade. Here, however, so much of the vital energy has been expended in the produc- tion of the floral organs, that they never properly recover themselves. When the flowers of a plant, under cultiva- tion, become double ; that is, when they have their repro- ductive organs changed into petals, and are thereby pre- vented from seeding, their life is considerably prolonged ; annuals even become perennial ; Tropceolum minus, when double, has endured for twelve years. The life of annuals may also be prolonged by grafting them upon perennials. Many annual Solanacese will live for years when grafted on ligneous species of the same genus, as the annual kinds of Tobacco, when grafted on the ISTicotiana glauca, that beau- tiful woody species which grows to a greater height than a man. A similar extension of life may be given to some of the annual species of Dianthus. Lastly, as regards the relation of procreation to the lease of life, it is a universal law, both in animals and plants, that the earlier the puberty, the earlier is the death. Annuals, which flower when only a few Aveeks old, die in a few months ; those plants only live long which do not blossom till their fifth or sixth year ; the highest ages invariably pertain to those which are the ]3 G 146 RESULTS OF CULTURE. slowest to celebrate their nuptials. Very young forest trees are never found in flower. 83. Many of the conditions Avhich affect the duration of vegetable life, are thus results or accompaniments of Culti- vation. The object of cultivation is, for the most part, gveatev fimitfubiess ; few plants are cultivated merely for the sake of their wood or foliage ; the aim is to procure either more flowers to delight us with their beauty, or more seeds to make use of as food. In either case, the stimulation which they receive at the hands of the gardener tends to hasten them on towards maturity, and to excite the repro- ductive energy to the utmost. The consequence is that the conservative power is reduced, and the organism prema- turely exhausted. Cultivation, therefore, as a rule, may be regarded as a shorten er of plant-life. Of course it is only the life of the individual that is abbreviated ; the absolute lease of life in the species is unaltered and unalterable, and is completed Avherever the individuals enjoy their existence unmolested. 84. The result of 07ie of the arts of culture makes it seem as if there Avere no such thing as a fixed lease of life in plants, viz., the art of propagation by sHjds and cuttings, which, when, carefully detached and placed in the soil,- will grow into counterparts of the original, and (they themselves being extensible after the same manner) effect for it a kind of perpetuity. Vines of the time of the Roman empire, have been thus transmitted to the present day, gifted as it were, by man with a longevity unknown to their state of nature. Many herbaceous perennials, especially in gardens, possess in this aptitude such amj)le and efficient means of propagation as to incline to the belief that their flowers and seeds are of quite secondary importance, dedicated rather to the heart and appetite of man. The lily of the valley, for example, and the strawberry. INDIVIDUALITY OF PLANTS 147 85. To see how this curious phenomenon harmonizes with the indubitable law of specific lease, we have to consider the peculiar structure or organic composition of plants, and, as flowing from this latter, the nature and amount of their in- dividuality. The organic composition of a plant is very- different from that of an animal. In all except the very lowest forms of animals, there is but one of each kind of or- gan, or of each set of organs, as the case may be, as one heart, one mouth, one set of limbs, one system of bones. Every organ is more or less in connection with every other, and not one of those which are preeminently "vital" can be removed without causing instant death to the whole fabric. The animal, in a word, is an absolute Unity, every part being reciprocally dependent upon every other part, and the springs of its life centralized. In the tree, on the other hand, there is no centralization ; no organ occurs only once ; everything is a thousand times recapitulated ; there are as many lungs as there are leaves, as many procreant parts as flowers. Like an arborescent zoophyte, a Sertu- laria, for example, a tree is a vast congeries of distinct or- ganisms, every one of them as independent of the others as one sheep is independent of the remainder of the flock, only that all are organically united, and contribute, by their union, to the general welfare, and to the building up of a magnificent social edifice. Every sejDarate twig is a little plant in itself; consociated with the others, but still inde- pendent of them, it feeds, grows, and procreates in its own person. A tree, therefore (and any plant old enough to have thrown out buds and shoots), is at once an Individual and a Community. It is an Individual in respect of its presentation of the physiognomy and characters of the spe- cies, the form, the altitude, and the gracefulness or robust dignity ; aiso as standing alone, and dying at the expiration of an allotted term ; it is a Community in respect of its consist- 148 TREES ARE INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES. ing of innumerable minor trees. So long as the constituent twigs remain seated on the bough, they are subject to the laws and vicissitudes of the general mass, sharing its life, and dying when it dies ; detached from it, every one of them is competent to strike root, and by degrees become the pillar of another such edifice. A fuchsia may be multiplied into a hundred, in the course of a single season, without destroy- ing the original stem ; and every one of these hundred may, three years afterwards, be multiplied into as many more. Such division of one organism into many is possible only where the fountains of life are not centralized — where there are neither brain nor heart, the means and tokens of con- centration ; hence it is practicable as regards the animal kingdom only in those humble tribes from which these or- gans appear to be absent, and the nature of which approxi- mates to that of plants. The analogy, we may add, be- tween trees and the arborescent zoophytes is in various other ways most curious and attractive. Here we cannot do more than advert to their wonderful correspondence in respect to the longevity of the general mass. Ehrenberg judges that certain enormous corals which he saw in the Red Sea, and parts of which are still tenanted by working polyps, were alive in the time of the Pharaohs, and have been groAving and enlarging ever since. Others, of equally vast age, have been observed in the waters of tropical America. 86. Dr. Harvey, in his most ingenious little book on " Trees and their Nature," revives the hypothesis originally propounded by De La Hire, and subsequently held by Dar- Avin, Mirbel, Du Petit Thenars, Gaudichaud, and others, that a tree is merely a mechanical and passive structure, as regards the trunk and AA'oody portions, these serving simply to support the annual twigs, and to alloAV the passage of fluids to and from the latter, by exosmose and other physi- PHYSIOGNOMY OF TREES. 149 cal and chemical laws. The tree, in its totality, he views, with these authors, simply as a collection of living yet per- fectly distinct annual tree-plants, the produce of the year, and of the dead remains of a still larger number, the pro- duce of preceding years ; the living plants evolved from buds, and growing as parasites on the organic remains of the dead plants. According to this view, the stem has no intrinsic vitality ; and all plants whatever are annuals, those commonly so called differing from such as grow on trees merely by having their connection directly with the soil, in- stead of indirectly through a woody pillar. A corollary is that there is no natural limit either to the life of trees, or to their size. Schleiden holds similar opinions. After citing examples of old trees, he observes : — " These examples are quite sufficient to prove the probability of a compound plant living on without end. These plants die ordinarily in consequence of mechanical injuries. A storm breaks off a branch ; the broken surface is exposed to the action of rain-water; decay takes place; the firmness of the heart- wood becomes affected ; a new storm casts the whole tree to the ground, separates the trunk from the roots, and it per- ishes of hunger." (" Principles of Scientific Botany," j). 538.) Let us see how this consists with facts. Every spe- cies of tree, like every species of animal, has its definite con- figuration and physiognomy, by which we recognize it whether covered Avith leaves or in the bareness of winter, and attains, under fair circumstances, a certain maximum size and height. Neither of these would be the case were the tree gifted with indefinite powers of life. The period of the culmination of the life of a tree is that when it shows its perfect and characteristic outline ; and this being acquired, though for awhile there may be little change in aspect, and though crops of new twigs may be annually produced for ]3 * 150 MR. knight's theory of trees. some years, declension as inevitably follows as with a man aftei' he has reached his meridian. 87. Thus independent — actually as regards themselves, potentially as regards the tree — healthy cuttings are equiva- lent to seedlings. Strictly without doubt, the new individu- als procured by taking slips from a given plant, are but portions of it, since those plants alone can legitimately be called new which come from seed. There are no absolute beginnings anywhere in nature except as the direct produce of sexuality. To view them, however, with Mr. Knight, as portions of a whole, disconnected merely, and involved in a common destiny, is quite incorrect. This eminent man went so far as to account for the extinction of certain varie- ties of apples and other fruits, on the hypothesis that when the original tree died, the extensions of it raised from cut- tings, though firmly rooted, and grown into large trees would die likewise. According to this hypothesis, an indi- vidual can exist in many places at once ; the willow, for ex- ample, which shades the first tomb of Napoleon at St. Helena, is the same as that which at Ermenonville weeps over the ashes of Rousseau. The original and the deriva- tives form a Avhole only in a historical point of view. In regard to the lease of life, a vigorous cutting is in the same position as a seed, and the tree raised from it enjoys a com- plete and indejDendent term of being. It has nothing to do with the lease of its predecessor, but commences life de novo, and attains the age proper to the species. Probably enough, a cutting taken from an old and enfeebled tree, past its climacteric, may be unable to develop itself luxuriantly, and may die almost as soon ; but taken from a young and healthy one, its lease runs to the full term. Plants, it should be observed, are not equally capable of jDropagation in the way described. As regards trees, those of which the wood is light and white succeed the best, the willovV, for ex- LEASE OF LIFE IN ALQM. 151 ample ; while with pines, oaks, and trees in general that have dense and resinous wood, the reluctance is extreme. Reviewing the whole matter, it will appear that so far from the principle of a fixed lease of life being invalidated by the facts of horticulture, it is verified with new illustrations. 88. Sea-weeds, like terrestrial plants, are annual, biennial, or perennial. The common green Ulva is an example of an annual; the great black fuci wLich hide the rocks on many coasts with their curious bladdered drapery, are perennial ; the biennial include, among others, the Rhodomenia pal- mata, or dulse, and the Delessaria sanguinea, that lovely translucent plant which carries the palm with no less justice in the gardens of the sea, than the rose, which it emu- lates in color, in those of the land. CHAPTER IX. DUMATION OF I^IFE IN ANIMALS. 89. In Animals, the lease of life is comparatively short. Though many species live longer than the generality of plants, none attain to ages so prodigious as occur among the patriarchs of the forest; neither are so many species longseval in proportion to the whole number. The elephant and the swan outlive myriads of shrubs and flowers; but when they have themselves waned into senility, the leafy- pride of many trees has scarcely begun. Fcav of any tribe of animals live more than forty years ; whereas trees, almost without exception, endure for at least a century. 90. The physiological or proximate reason of this disparity is, that in the animal kingdom, taken as a whole, life is pre- sent in a higher degree of concentration. This involves a more elaborate and complex organization, and a greater in- tensity of vital action; sustained, moreover, in unbroken continuity, and in every portion of the fabric at once — the very conditions which, as illustrated in the machines con- structed by human art, are identified with fragility and early exhaustion. In plants, without doubt, the organization is exquisitely fine, and the vital functions are various and wonderful. The microscopist well knows how beautiful is the system of cells, and tubes, and spiral vessels, constituting the internal substance of a plant; and the physiologist, how admirable and profound is that vital economy which enables it to grow, to put forth leaves and blossoms in their proper 152 INDIVIDUALITY OF ANIMALS. 153 season, and to prepare sugar, oil, farina, and the thousand other products which render the vegetable kingdom so inva- luable to man ; still, it is not such an organization as per- tains to Animal life, which demands both new varieties of tissue and new forms of organic apparatus. For while the animal is the completion of the design so marvellously sha- dowed forth and prefigured in the plant, it is not merely the plant more nobly and curiously developed. It is a recon- struction of the plant, effected, certainly, with the same crvide materials, but wrought into forms more rare and com- posite, and with an entirely new set of ideas superadded. It is a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that plant and animal exactly agree, even in a single circumstance of their respective natures. There are organs of digestion, respira- tion, reproduction, and so forth, in both; and there is a general correspondence between the functions which these organs severally fulfill ; but they are never the same organs, nor the same functions, in the strict and proper meaning of the word. The animal dwells on a higher platform, and all the phenomena of its history are in keeping. 91. The intenser life of the animal gives it a completer individuality, and to this, as the end for wliich it is gifted Avith intenser life, is properly to be ascribed its shorter lease when compared with the durability of the plant. The end for which a thing is designed is always the noblest feature of its being, and therefore the most useful as well as philo- sophical to keep uppermost in view. ''It is for the sake of sustaining its individuality that the organization of an animal is so complex and elaborate; it is for the same rea- son that the vital functions are so varied, ceaseless, and in- terwoven ; and further, that they are so universal as to the theatre of their performance. For they are not exercised only at certain periods, or in certain portions of the organ- ism, but unceasingly, from birth to dissolution, and as vigo- 154 ACTIVITY THE GREAT CHARACTERISTIC. rously in one part as another. Certain great duties are assigned to special organs as head-quarters, it is true; but practically and in effect, every organ is diffused throughout the body, and every function is everywhere performed. The heart is wherever there is blood ; the brain wherever there is feeling. The great characteristic of concentrated life, or of Individuality in high j)erfection, is this vivid, ceaseless, omnipresent Activity. In all the forms of nature which are endowed with it — that is, in all animals of any com- plexity of organization, as we saw when considering the sub- ject of food — there is a continual drawing-in of nutrient matter from without, and conversion of it into living tissue, and as continual a decomposition of Avhat has previously been assimilated, and concurrent expulsion of the fragments. Every moment, in the life of an animal, Avitnesses a new receiving, appropriation, and giving back; old age and rejuvenescence revolving upon each other; death destroying over again, and creation beginning afresh. On the excreting part of the process, the maintenance of the vital condition is more closely and immediately dependent than it is even upon the supply of new aliment. Feeding may be suspended for a considerable period without causing anything more than debility: but the removal of the effete particles gene- rated by the decomposition of the tissues, cannot be checked even for a few minutes, at least in the warm-blooded animals, without inducing a fatal result. For every act of respira- tion is in effect one of excretion, and to stay the breathing, as we all know, is to quench the life. 92. In trees and plants, on the other hand, M'here the con- centration of life is slight, the individuality faint, and the organization comparatively simple, so simple that no part of the organism is absolutely dependent upon another part, where there are no consecrated vital centres, no heart, lungs, brain, or digestive cavity, existence no longer depends upon ANALOGIES OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 155 incessant and total change of the very substance of the fabric, and the vital activity is proportionately low. The bulk of the tree, that is, all the consolidated or woody por- tion, and every other part which has been finally shaped and hardened, instead of living by perpetual decomposition and reconstruction, and depending on these processes as the very condition of existence, remains fixed and unalterable till the lease of the entire organism has run out. Those parts only which are immediately employed in the vital pro- cesses, as the flowers, and leaves, and the extreme ends of the rootlets, in which parts there is also more concentration of life, are subject to such decay as takes place in the body of an animal. In these it occurs in close and striking cor- respondence, along with as complete a renovation. What the tissues are to the animal, the foliage is to plant and tree; every perennial plant, like every animal, dies innumerable molecular or leafy deaths prior to its total, somatic death ; and, as the years roll by, is reinstated in as many molecular or leafy lives. Autumn and spring are to the tree, by cor- respondence, what every day of its existence is to a living animal; all that is concerned in keeping it alive withers away, but all is rapidly renewed. The difierence as to the ime that elapses between the respective deaths and renova- tions, i. e., of the molecules of the animal frame, and the leafy atoms of the tree, in no wise robs the phenomena of their essential unity. That which is most concentrated is always most vivacious, as the mountain-rivulet runs faster than the broad river of the plain. It was no mere play of fancy that led the ancients to call man arbor inversa. Man is not only man; he is all things, every part of the universe in turn, according to the point of view from which we look. The fable of Proteus is but a description of human nature : " First indeed he became a lion with noble mane, and then a dragon, and a leopard, and a great bear; and he became 156 LEASES OF LIFE IN THE MAMMALIA. liquid water, and a lofty-leaved tree." Flesh and blood to our first or anatomical ideas, under the alchemy of the ima- gination, the human body transmutes into tree, fountain, temple, and all things in succession that are beautiful and glorious. Things are intelligible in fact, and truly seen, only in the degree that we discern ourselves in them, and read them through the lens of human nature. " To describe any scene well," says Richter, "the poet must make the bosom of a man his camera obscura, and look at it through this ;" similarly, to enter into the full, philosophic understanding even of the simplest objects and phenomena of the world, we must take that " choice optic glass," the human body and its life. 93. On a general survey of the ages reached by animals, when not shortened by violence or disease, the area of time which they cover is found but small compared with that of plants. With a few exceptions, forty, as before said, is about the maximum age, and three or four alDout the mini- mum. ISTo such exact division can be made among them as that of annuals, biennials, and perennials, among plants, unless certain insects correspond to the first named. It is to be observed, however, that there is an ordinary maximum age, and an extra-ordinarj. Every known lease of life, at least in the vertebrate animals, appears capable of renewal, or rather of extension, even to the doubling of the ordinary period; that is, while every creature has its customary or natural term, it appears competent to live, under certain favorable circumstances, for an extraordinary or additional term of the same, or nearly the same, extent. Thus, while the ordinary life of man is three score and ten, he is capable of an extraordinary life of seventy years more ; the ordinary life of the camel is forty or fifty, but individuals sometimes last out the century. Query, then, which is the actual and original lease? And if the longer one be the original (as LEASES OF LIFE IN THE MAMMALIA. 157 all the probabilities favor the belief of its being), why is it cut short by one-half in all but a few memorable cases ? 94. The longest-living Mammal, after the whale, already mentioned, appears to be that affectionate, docile, and saga- cious creature, the elephant. Nothing is known positively as to its lease, but the estimate of one hundred and fifty years is certainly not beyond the mark.* The rhinoceros and the hippopotamus are reputed to come next, a maxi- mum of seventy or eighty being assigned to each of these huge brutes; then, it is said, follows the camel, a meagre, dry, active, exceedingly hardy animal, whose useful life ex- tends not infrequently to fifty. The period, reckoning by decrements, between fifty and thirty, is reached by few. The stag, longseval only in romance, dies at thirty-five or thereabouts ; the leopard, bear, and tiger, fail fully ten years earlier; twenty-five or thirty is the ordinary maximum of the horse and ass, though the severe treatment of man rarely allows them to reach even this. The mule, it is worthy of notice, is stronger-lived and becomes older, a circumstance anticipated in plants, where hybrids frequently live longer than their parents. The cause is probably the same in both, and to be found in their infertility, whereby their whole vigor is left at liberty for self-maintenance, instead of being expended in two directions. Many leases expire between twenty and ten. The former seems to be the ordmary maxi- mum of the lion, as reached in menageries, though when unconfined it evidently lives longer, for it has sometimes been found Avithout teeth. Twenty is the limit also with the bull, despite his great strength, size, and solidity; the dog and the wolf seldom pass eighteen ; the sheep, the goat, and * An elephant aged one hundred and twenty years was put to death ia London, in July, 1855. — Times, July 23d. 14 158 AGES ATTAINED BY BIKDS. the fox, rarely live more than twelve. The maximum of the domestic cat is said to be ten ; that of the rabbit, hare, and guinea-pig, seven or eight; that of the mouse, five or six, and of other such little animals about the same. As to the leases of the remainder of the four-footed creatures of our planet, excepting a dozen or so, zoology is entirely unin- formed, and until they shall have been ascertained, of course nothing like a proper list can be constructed. The animals which have been mentioned are certainly among the chief, and indicate the scope and limits which a table of ages, when completed, will exhibit ; but so far, the list is only like a boy's first map, unfurnished except with the names of the seas, the metropolis, and his native town. One thing is plain, that Man, regarded as a member of the animal king- dom, has no occasion to murmur at the shortness of his lease of life, but should rather congratulate himself, seeing that he enjoys a considerably longer term, even in his ordi- nary duration, than the great mass of his physiological fra- ternity, while it is pretty certain that there is not an animal of his own size that does not return to di]^st before half as old. 95. The scale of ages attained by Birds is much about the same as that of mammals; but taking one with another, they probably live longer in proportion to their bulk. No creatures are better adapted for longevity; they are pecu- liarly well clothed, for no covering can be more complete, or better calculated to preserve warmth, than their soft, close-lying feathers; and as these are rene^wed periodically, they are maintained in the best possible condition. Many birds also cast their bills, and acquire new ones, a most ad- vantageous exchange for them, since they are thereby ren- dered so much the better able to feed themselves. Besides- these peculiarities, birds live almost entirely in the fresh air, and their habits are cheerful and sportive, conditions emi- AGES OF FISHES. 159 nently conducive to long life. As to tlie particular terms of life which obtain among them, Flourens says he knows "nothing certain." There is plenty of evidence, neverthe- less, that such birds as the eagle, the vulture, the falcon, and the swan, far surpass all others in longevity, and attain ages so remarkable as often to exceed very considerably that of man. . Even the crow is reputed to live a hundred years, and the raven no less than ninety. There have been in- stances of the parrot living for sixty years a prisoner, and its age, when captured, Avould have to be added. Pelicans and herons are said to reach forty to fifty years; hawks, thirty to forty; peacocks, goldfinches, and blackbirds, about twenty; pheasants and pigeons, about the same; nightin- gales, fifteen; the robin, a little less; domestic fowls, about ten; thrushes, eight or nine; wrens, two to three. 96. Concerning the ages of Fishes, even less is known than about birds. It is vaguely believed of them that they are longseval. The reasons for this opinion are, that the element in which they live is more uniform in its condition than the atmosphere, and that they are less subject in conse- quence to those injurious influences which tend to shorten the lives of terrestrial creatures; and secondly, that their bones, being of a more cartilaginous nature than those of land animals, admit of almost indefinite extension, so that the frame is longer in growing to maturity. Gesner gives an instance of a carp, in Germany, which was knoAvn to be a hundred years old; other writers assign to this fish as much as a hundred and fifty, and to the pike a longevity even greater. Hufeland remarks that natural death occurs among fishes more rarely than in any other part of the ani- mal kingdom. "The law of the transition of one into another, according to the right of the strongest, prevails here far more generally than elsewhere. One devours anotlxer, — the stronger the weaker. This regulation," he 160 AGES OF REPTILES. continues, " is a proof of divine and exalted v^isdom. If the innumerable millions of the inhabitants of the waters were to remain when they died a single day unentombed, they would speedily diffuse abroad the most dreadful pestilential evaporation. But passing, while scarcely dead, into the substance of another living being, death exists less in the water than on land, — the putrefaction takes place in the stomachs of the stronger." 97. Reptiles attain surprising ages. The tortoise, which is so slow in growing that in twenty years an increase of a few inches is all that can be detected, has lived even in cap- tivity above a century. One placed in the garden of Lam- beth Palace, in the time of Archbishop Laud, lived there till the year 1753; and its death was then induced seemingly through misfortune rather than old age. The enormous creatures of this kind, natives of the Galapagos, undoubt- edly live twice or thrice as long as the common species; an individual possessed some years back by the London Zoolo- gical Society, had every apj)earance of being at least a hundred and seventy -five. Even these immense ages were probably far exceeded by the great fossil testudinata of the Himalayahs. It is easy to see the cause of such longevity. The same law which obtains in the mechanics of inanimate matter, operates in the organisms of vitalized matter, namely, that what is gained in time must be lost in power. The active habits which in shorter-lived animals accelerate the vital processes, and bring the lease to an early close, here are no longer found. The tortoises have no excitable nervous system to wear out the durable materials encased in their impenetrable armor; they spend the greater part of their lives in inactivity, and exist rather than live. By analogy, it may be infeiTed that the loricate and ophidian reptiles reach an age fully as advanced as the tortoises. LEASES OF LIFE IN INSECTS. IGl The crocodile, large, strong, vigorous, enclosed in a hard coat of mail, and incredibly voracious, is, without doubt, exceed- ingly long-lived. The larger serpents, also slow in growth, and passing a considerable portion of their lives in semi- torpor, are also unquestionably longseval. Feeding vora- ciously, at long intervals, so familiar in the case of serpents, seems invariably associated with prolonged life. As regards the Amphibia, Smellie refers to a toad known to have been at least thirty-six. The frog, which, by reason of its slow growth, in this climate at least, is incapable of producing young till its fourth yeai", reaches, however, what in propor- tion to this late puberty is the very inconsiderable age of no more than from twelve to about sixteen. 98. Insects, for the most part, are short-lived, especially after their last transformation. Some, after acquiring their wings, live only for the remainder of the day. In calculat- ing the ages of insects, of course they must be reckoned from the hatching of the egg. Different species exist two, three, and even four y^ars in the grub state; then a con- siderable time in the chrysalis; the winged state being merely that of completed maturity. That which especially marks the latter is the fitness of the creature for propaga- tion ; and this, as the period of its bloom, is also the briefest. The Ephemerae, in their winged state, are not even creatures of a day. Scarcely a single gnat, as such, survives a week ; not half the beetles, nor any of the grasshoppers nor Tipulse, those long-legged dancers of the autumn, enters on a second month; a fortnight sees the death of almost every kind of butterfly and moth. One of the longest-living insects is that brilliant beetle, the Scarabceus auratus, or Rose-chaffer, the only one that feeds upon the flower from which it takes its English name. After four years spent as a grub, and a fortnight as a chrysalis, it has lived in captivity from two to 14* 162 GENERAL CAUSES OF _ LONGEVITY. three years more.* That curious but treacherous and cruel creature, the Mantis religiosa, or Praying cricket, which holds up the foremost pair of its long, desiccated, skeleton legs, as if in the act of prayer, is said to attain a full octave. 99. Whatever errors there may be in the particular figures above quoted, the general principles which they illustrate are indisputable. Whatever class of organisms we may take, the ground of longer or shorter life lies uni- versally in the structure, the temperament, and the less or greater vital energy. We have seen how this is manifested in regard to the aggregate of organic nature ; also how it is verified in respect to plants ; it obtains with animals, in their several tribes and species, after precisely the same manner, only that the phenomena are played forth in greater variety, and in costumes appropriate to the nobler stage. All the diversities in the duration of animal life may be referred perhaps to the two general heads — of Size, as regards the substance of the creature, and Ene»gy, as regards its vital powers. Other circumstances are but adjuncts, though in- separably connected with and conditional on them. All the longseval creatures, like all the longseval trees, are con- siderable in their bulk ; at all events they are the largest forms of their respective tribes, the swan, for example, among birds,f and the crocodile among reptiles ; the smallest forms, on the otber hand, are always the shortest- lived. The reason coniists in the ampler command which they possess over the world around them. As the colossal tree owes its longCAity to its immense feeding-surface of * See for an entertaining account of the keeping this beautiful in- sect as a pet, "Episodes of Insect Life," voL ii., p. 76. f The ostrich, as the largest of birds, is undoubtedly the longest liver, but nothing is known with certainty as to its lease. GENERAL CAUSES OF LONGEVITY. 163 green leaf, so the largely-developed animal lives longer than the little one, because it possesses more vital capacity, more contact with external nature, more scope and opportunity for acquiring strength of every kind ; there is also greater power of resisting what is inimical to life, as intense cold, though marvelous examples of the latter property occur among those living riddles, the animalcules. Great size, however, does not carry long life with it necessarily. More intimately connected with longevity even than bulk, is the greater or less intensity of the vital action ; in proportion to the rapidity with which an animal lives, is invariably the brevity of its lease. That is, of two animals, alike in regard to bulk, that one will have the shortest duration which lives the fastest, and that one the longest which lives slowest. The expression "fast living," now so commonly applied to extravagant expenditure of the resources, involv- ing premature stoppage and decay, is not a mere phrase of gay society ; it denotes a condition of things Avhich in nature is sometimes normal. The two great kingdoms of organ- ized nature are physiologically characterized in fact, by this very thing. It is because trees live so slowly that they endure for centuries, and because animals live so fast that few of them reach fifty. All the longseval animals have a relatively lower vital energy ; all the short-lived (or at least such as attain any considerable bulk) possess it in excess. As a result of this condition, we usually find the longseval creatures deliberate and stately in their movements, and leading calm and placid lives, as the elephant, the giraffe, and the swan ; while the short-lived ones are as remarkable for their sportive restlessness, as they course about the fields, or sail through the sky or water. Creatures that run much are rarely, if ever, long-lived. In the vegetable kingdom it is the same ; the longaeval tree is like the elephant it shades, tranquil and august ; the gourd that dies Avith the close of 164 REPRODUCTION AND LONGEVITY. summer is rampant and wanton. In the whole compass of nature, perhaps there is nothing more full of quiet grandeur than the sacred, ever-verdant cedar of twenty centuries. 100. The circumstances of animal life which bear inti- mate relation to its lease, though not immediately promotive or preventive of longevity, are chiefly, as in plants, those connected with Eeproduction. Early pubertj'-, which in plants forebodes an early death, similarly announces it in animals, for it shows that maturity will soon be reached, and we scarcely need the proverb* to learn what happens next. Contrariwise, those creatures live the longest which are latest in acquiring ability to procreate. The long life of man, for example, follows as a natural sequence upon his protracted infancy. Other animals of his size begin to pro- pagate after a much earlier anniversary of birth than he does ; they attain their puberty in a few years, or even months ; waiting for it the seventh part of a century, man is compensated at the end. The period occupied in gestation is remarkably correlative with the term of life. The longer time an animal requires for its formation in its mother's womb, the more extended is its life ; the shorter the period between conception and birth, the less is the lease extended. The duration of gestation is of course largely determined by the creature's size and organization in general. The bulky elephant goes with young no less than twenty months, and lives a century and a half; the puny rabbit requires only thirty days, and dies in eight years. What is reputed concerning the long life of the swan becomes credible when tested by this law; for incubation in birds corresponds to gestation in mammals, and no bird, unless the ostrich, is so slow in hatching its eggs. The law, like all others, belongs * Quod eito fit, cito peril. "That which is quickly formed, quickly perishes." Vulgarly, " Soon ripe, soon rotten," GESTATION AND LONGEVITY. 165 as mucli to jDlants, wherein the gestation of animals is pre- figured in tlie rijpening of the fruit. The longseval trees are among the first to open their flowers (the instruments of vegetable coition), yet their seeds are the latest to become ripe, the whole season, from early spring to the close of autumn, being required for their proper maturation. Thus, though the yew blossoms in March, or several weeks before the apple, its berries are not ripe till the end of October ; the box-tree opens its flowers at the same time, but is scarcely parturient till winter. Many kinds of pine-trees, also the cedar, and several oaks, as Quercus Cerris, suber, and rubra, all of them long-lived, require two seasons to bring their fruits to jDerfection. On the other hand, the short-lived perennials, and annuals universally, complete the whole process of reproduction, from the opening of the flowers to the ripening of the seed, in the course of some six or seven weeks. In the mistletoe occurs a curious excep- tion. Like the yew and the box, it blossoms early in the spring, and ripens its berries certainly no sooner, perhaps not till near Christmas, yet it is by no means a longseval plant. How are we to account for this ? May it be refer- able to the parasitic nature of the plant, being dependent on plunder for its sustenance ? 101. The number of young produced at a birth is again correlative with the duration of life. The longest-living animals produce the fewest, while the shortest-lived are also the most prolific. The female elephant, rhinoceros, hippo- potamus, and camel, never have more than one at a birth ; the horse, the ox, the stag, one, and occasionally two ; the goat and the sheep have from one to three or four ; the leo- pard and tiger, four or five ; the dog, the fox, and the cat, three to six ; the rabbit, four to eight ; the guinea-pig, the most prolific of the mammalia, four to twelve. In the hu- man race, where the lease of life is considerable in propor- 166 FECUNDITY AND LONG LIFE. tion to tlie size of the body, twins come only once in every seventy oi' eighty births ; trijDlets only once in seven thou- sand.* About fifteen seems the highest number of young ever produced at one birth among the warm-blooded ani- mals ; in fact, a larger number would be incompatible with the economy of utero-gestation, and subsequently with that of the maternal nourishment, the fountains of which are visually about double the number of the young produced at a birth. It would be incompatible, also, with the fair sharing of the earth's surface, and thus with the fine ba- lance, harmony, and proportions of nature. The economy of incubation puis a similar limit to the number of eggs that a bird hatches at once, which is seldom less than two or three, and never above sixteen. The most astonishing cases of fecundity occur among fishes and insects. In the genus Cyprinus among the former, comprising the carp, the barbel, the tench, the bream, &c., hundreds of thousands of ova have been counted ; and in the common cod, several millions. Crustaceous animals often jDroduce many thou- sands ; and the Batrachians, some hundreds at the least. Like the preceding, this great principle is exemplified also in plants. The number of seeds produced by annuals and short-lived plants is infinitely greater than trees usually yield ; for though in the aggregate of their crops of fruit trees are so fertile, in the strict physiological sense they are few-seeded, and not infrequently onl}' one-seeded. In com- paring plants and animals as to their productiveness, we must remember that a tree is a nation, every bough a pro- vince, every branch a large district ; we have to consider, therefore, not the sum total of the produce of the entire * This proportion is not universal, varying with different nations. Tlie Greenland women scarcely ever have twins ; whereas among the people of Chili they are remarkably common. LEASE OF HUMAN LIFE. 167 number of flowers — the total, for instance, of the acorns upon an oak — but how many seeds are produced by each separate and independent flower, which is the real equiva- lent of the animal, the tree itself being equivalent to a whole herd of quadrupeds, or a whole city-full of mankind. Thus, the flowers of the oak-tree, which lives above a thou- sand years, j)roduce, like the elephant, only one at a birth ; the flowers of the apple-tree, about ten ; those of the straw- berry-plant (a perennial), more than a hundred ; those of the poppy (an annual), eight thousand. That there is an exact ratio between the productiveness of a plant and the period to which it lives, is by no means asserted. There are plenty of few-seeded annuals, and of many-seeded peren- nials ; but, as a rule, the formep are more fecund. Pufl*- balls and parasitic fungi, the most ephemeral of plants, cast their seeds into the atmosphere like impalpable dust, agree- ing in their fecundity with fishes. The quantity of fruit produced by the entire tree or plant, corresponding as it does to the population of a country, has its own laws of in- crease and fluctuation, and is a different matter altogether from fertility of the species, as correlative with lease of life. When we find longsevals very fecund, it is probably because their produce is an important food to some creature of supe- rior rank. How few^ acorns ever become oaks. 102. What may be the lease of Human life, is a question for which the Psalmist is almost universally acknowledged to have provided a final answer: "The days of our years are three score years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off', and we flee away." There are plenty of examples, however, of longevity far exceeding even the higher figures, accompanied by retention of all the faculties and poAvers the exercise of which forms the true life of man. Arguing from these, it has been thought that, by using proper means. 168 LEASE OF HUMAN LIFE. an age of no less than two centuries may be attained ; less ambitious minds have been content to hope for a century and a half; in Genesis itself one hundred and twenty years are fixed, (vi. 3.) Buffon considered that the maximum need never be under ninety or a hundred, which " the man," says he, " who does not die of accidental causes, everywhere reaches." Flourens, the latest writer upon the subject, con- curs in the opinion of his famous countryman : A hundred years of life is what Providence intended for man; it is true that few reach this great term, but lioiv feiv do what is neces- sary to attain it ! With our customs, our passions, our mi- series, man does not die — he kills himself. If we observe men, we shall see that almost all lead a nervous and conten- tious life, and that most of them die of disappointment. How few, comparatively, number even the three score and ten! The weakness of infancy, the intemperance of the adult period, the violence of diseases, the fatality of acci- dents, and other circumstances similarly inimical to long life, prevent more than about seventy persons in every thou- sand attaining natural old age. There is great solace, never- theless, in the thought of what may be reached. Haller, who has collected a great number of examples of long life, reckons up more than a thousand instances of individuals having attained the age of one hundred to one hundred and ten, sixty of one hvmdred and ten to one hundred and twenty, twenty-nine of one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty, fifteen of one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty, six of one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty, and one of one hundred and sixty-nine. Curtis, but without the credibility of Haller, cites one hundred and seventy-two, one hundred and eighty-five, and two hundred and seven. As regards the life of the Antediluvians, before the question is examined physiologically, it may be well for those who are curious about it to be sure what the inspired narrative really RELATION OF MATURITY TO TERM OF LIFE. 160 means. When the belief that the names of the patriarchs denote communities rather than individuals, shall be shown to be more at variance with the sjDirit and the object of the sacred records than the popular opinion is, it will be time to take it up as a matter of science. A noted living theologian suggests from out of one of the darkest caves of literalism, that our first parents did actually eat of the Tree of Life, and that its virtue Avas transmitted through several successive generations, till at last it became dissipated and lost, and man was reduced to a miserable tithe of his first possession.* 103. Flourens fixes a hundred as the normal life of man on the principle that there is an exact ratio between the period occupied in growing to maturity and the full term or lease of existence, a principle which he shows pretty conclu- sively to prevail throughout the whole of the mammalia. Aristotle was the first to enunciate this great doctrine; Buf- fon the first to throw it into coherent shape. As set forth by the latter, it teaches that every animal lives, or at least is competent to live, from six to seven times as many years as it consumes in growing. The stag, he tells us, is five or six years in growing, and lives thirty-five or forty in all; the horse is about four, and lives to be twenty-five or thirty. " One thing only," says Flourens, " was unknown to Bufibn, namely, the sign that marks the term of growth." This is the essen- tial point ; it is by having determined the sign that Flourens has vitalized the doctrine, which, so long as it lay undisco- vered, was little better than a speculation. There might be no hesitation in conceding the theory; but until the basis of the calculation could be indisputably shown, there could ^ See, on the non-literal character of the statements respecting the ages of the Antediluvians, Eev. E. J). Eendell's "Antediluvian History," chapter xviii., (1850), also the " Prospective Eeview," vol. ii., p. 251. 15 H 170 MATURITY MARKED IN THE BONES. be no security felt in the conclusions. Still, it was a grand idea — one of those fine truths in outline which nature seems to delight in sketching on the thoughts of imaginative men, and filling up gradually and at leisure. The maturity of the body in general of course consists in the maturity of all its parts, but the period of such maturity diflfers almost as raiich as the parts themselves. The muscles, the composition of the vocal apparatus, even the eye-brows, have their re- spective periods of perfect development, and Avere we mi- nutely acquainted with every jDarticular of the body, each would probably furnish the sign required. Flourens finds it in the Bones. The bones are the basis of the whole sys- tem ; they are the first principle, so to speak, of its configu- ration; they support, defend, and contain the nobler organs. To fulfill these functions, they uniformly require to be pos- sessed of the three mechanical properties of firmness, light- ness, and tenacity, and in order to these it is needful that they be exquisitely organized. We are apt to suppose, from the hardness and durability of bones, that even in the living body they are scarcely vital; that they should be subjects of gradual and delicate growth, seems almost impossible to conceive. But minute anatomy, the most pleasing and re- warding part of the science of the human fabric, shows bones to be as full of life, in their degree, as any of the softer parts, and that the organization is inferior to none. In order that they shall possess the three properties alluded to, bones are formed of two principal ingredients, an animal matter and an earthy matter, intimately interblended. In the bones of the infant the quantity of earthy matter is com- paratively small, and the animal substance itself is softer than at later periods. As it grows, however, the proportions change; the animal matter becomes firmer; earthy particles are deposited in it abundantly, and the bone gradually as- sumes its proper density. The total of the process consti- HOW OSSIFICATION PEOCEEDS. 171 tutes "''ossification." The proportion of earthy to animal matter is not the same in the different bones. The maximum occurs in those of the head; the long bones of the limbs have the next largest quantity, those of the upper limbs ex- ceeding the lower; and last of all come the bones of the trunk. Thus, the Earthy matter. Animal matter. Temporal bone contains 63"50 36"o0 Humerus " 63-02 36-98 Femur " 62-49 37-51 The earthy matter is not deposited in every part at once ; it spreads, so to speak, from ossific centres, gradually diffusing itself throughout the mass. This is of the utmost import- ance to observe, for it is upon this apparently trifling cir- cumstance that the whole of the conclusions are primarily founded. In all the long bones, as those of the legs and arms, there are portions at the extremities which, at first, or in the child, are united to the intermediate portion only by the cartilage or animal matter of which the bone then prin- cipally consists. These end-portions of the bone (called its epiphyses) are ossific centres — points at which the deposition of earthy matter commences, and from which it gradually extends. As growth proceeds, ossification progresses from the middle part of the bone towards the epiphyses, and from the epiphyses towards the middle ^ixi% till at last they are joined into one continuous mass of hard, completed bone. As soon as the junction is effected, and the bone consolidated, growth is completed, and the sign of matu- rity established. "As long," says Flourens, " as the bones are not united to their epiphyses, the animal grows ; when once the bones and their epiphyses are united, the animal grows no more." Not that growth is completed and matu- ritv established, in that strict sense of the words which 172 MAN FITTED TO LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS. would imply an absolutely stationary condition thencefor- wards, or at least of the whole body. There is no period when the system is absolutely stationary ; it is always either advancing to a state of perfection, or receding from that state. The skeleton alone remains fixed. " It is true that at the adult age, the determinate height and figure, the set- tled features, and in man, the marked moral and mental character, naturally gave rise to the supposition that a fixed point has been attained ; but a little inquiry soon teaches us that the individual is still the subject of progressive changes. The capability of powerful and prolonged muscular exer- tion increases for some years ; there must consequently be a change in the muscular tissue. The intellectual faculties have not attained their maximum, although we do not hesi- tate to consider them mature ; we must therefore infer that there is a corresponding development in the substance of the brain." In the camel, Flourens goes on to say, the union of the epiphyses to the bones is completed at eight years old, in the horse at five, in the ox at four, in the eat at eighteen months, in the rabbit at twelve months, and in every case the duration of life is five times, or pretty nearly, the age of- the creature when this process is accomplished. Flourens does not differ essentially from Buffon in saying five times instead of six or seven times the period of matu- rity, because Buffon fixed maturity at earlier epochs. It is the same thing in the end to say seven times five with Buf- fon, or five times seven with Flourens. In man, the union of the epiphyses to the bones takes place at twenty years of age, and as observation appears to establish five as the le- gitimate number by which to multiply in regard to the re- mainder of the mammalia, the conclusion is that five times twenty, or a hundred, is the normal lease in our own spe- cies. If the j)rinciple be sound — and there is no reason for distrust — to determine the lease of life in animals where it LONGEVITY INFLUENCED BY SEX AND MARRIAGE. 173 will apply, will be, for the future, a comparatively easy matter. A few careful examinations of the bones in grow- ing individuals will enable the period of maturity to be learned with certainty, and five times this period may be inferred to be the lease.* 104. Numerous facts of a miscellaneous character invite our notice in regard to the duration of human life. Cceteris paribus, large men are said to live longer than little ones ; married men longer than bachelors. Celibacy as well as marriage has its advocates in this respect, the fact probably being that there is plenty of illustration of both opinions, though on the whole, matrimony certainly has the advan- tage. We may reconcile the different views by considering that in the one case there is less w-ear and tear of the vital energy ; and that in the other the weakened frame is re- stored and replenished by the tender offices of affection. " If two lie together then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone?" As a rule, longevity is greater in women than in men. Childbirth and its antecedents occasion in- deed a considerable loss of life ; the age of j)uberty carries off" eight per cent, more maidens than youths ; the propor- tion of deaths in parturition is one in one hundred and eight ; the difference, however, which these losses would seem to produce disappears in the general average. Either sex may calculate their jjrobability of life by reckoning the difference between the age already attained and ninety. * For a variety of other and curious details on the subject of the duration of life, both in man and the lower animals, such as it is unnecessary here to introduce, the student may refer to the works of Flourens, Hufeland, and Buffon, above cited, and on the particu- lar subject of maturity, to the article "Age," in Todd's Cyclopsedia of Pliysiology. See also the reviews of Flourens in Blackwood for May, 1855, and Colburn for July of the same year. 15 « 174 LONGEVITY AFFECTED BY PURSUITS. Half that difference is what the assurance offices would call their " expectation." For example, a man of forty years old has fifty between his age and ninety; half of that fifty is twenty-five ; and provided he is free from any undermining disease, he may trust that for those twenty-five years he will continue, with God's blessing, to enjoy the honor and privi- lege of existence. One thing it is important to remember — the period of maturity is the only one that admits of pro- longation. Infancy, childhood, and youth, have certain limits, which are seldom come short of or exceeded. The same in old age — it cannot endure beyond a certain length of time, and when once it begins, it speedily leads to the grave. In other words, neither childhood nor old age can be arrested ; middle life alone can be stretched out. Of the three conditions of life we cannot possibly alter the first and third, for they are out of our control ; the middle one we may abbreviate or prolong, since it is left for us to deal with as we choose. The influence of jyursuits and occupa- tions on the duration of life has often been illustrated. The average is said to be with clergymen sixty-five years ; with merchants sixty-two ; farmers sixty-one ; military men fifty- nine ; lawyers fifty-eight ; artists fifty-seven, and so on. Po- verty and destitution tend to shorten life ; comfort and happiness to prolong it. CHAPTER X. GHOirWDS OF THE VARIOUS JLEASJE OF ZIFE. SPIRITJIATj JSAS2S OF JSTATITRE. 105. The primary, essential reasons of the diversity in the duration of life (as distinct from the proximate or phy- siological), ai"e comprised in the law of Correspondence, and the law of Use, the tAvo great principles which furnish the whole rationale of existence. Correspondence un- folds the relation of the material world to the spiritual, and shows the first Causes of visible nature ; Use instructs us as to the particular Ends for which the various objects of creation have been designed, and the necessity there is for every one of them. Springing out of these laws, and de- pendent on them, is the condition of Form, by which term is to be understood not merely the configuration of a thing, but the total of the circumstances which establish its iden- tity, such as the size, organization, and vital economy; and according to these last, according to the peculiarities of the Form, is eventually determined the duration of the life. The inmost, original causes of the diversity in the lease of life we thus discover in spiritual philosoj)hy, the last, con- cluding ones, in the philosophy of nature. We should accustom ourselves thus to trace things to their first begin- nings, whatever may be the subject of investigation. Our mental progress is immensely contingent upon it ; desire to discover, and success in finding them, are the surest signs of enlarging intellectual empire. For the true philosophy 175 176 THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. of cause and effect does not consist in the simple determina- tion of immediate antecedents, nor is it satisfied to remain in them. Every cause is itself only the effect of a still finer cause, Avhich again results from a yet finer, no longer phy- sical, necessarily, and the whole chain, from beginning to end, must be considered, if we would acquire a just notion of the last effect. Nowhere is it more needful to investigate these successive causes than in regard to the duration of life. To see the reasons of longer and shorter life purely in its organic apparatus, is to see the cause of Language in the movements of the lips and tongue. It is a truth, but not the whole, nor the vital truth. Every physical fact is the last issue and expression of something spiritual, which must be sought before the former can become properly intelligible, and to which reason will direct its steps, though half-reason may stand indifferent and mocking. 106. With Correspondence, accordingly, or the relations of the material world Avith the Spiritual, lies our first con- cern. To enter successfully upon the consideration of it, obviously requires that we should hold clear ideas of what the material and the spiritual respectively are. Concerning these we must therefore primarily inquire, and especially concerning the spiritual world. Strictly, the consideration of the spiritual expression of Life should precede that of the spiritual World. The obligation to take the latter before its time comes of the fact that all great truths have many points of contact, whereby it becomes impossible to treat intelligibly of any one of them without approaching and anticipating others. The truth, however, of the general system which comprises them is declared by it, since in order to the harmony of a whole, every part must be in alliance, and the insulation of any one part impracticable. The spiritual world is no mere abstraction. Viewed tlieologieally, it is the place in which Ave shall consciously reside after the THE MATERIAL WOKLL REPRESENTATIVE ONLY. 177 death of our material bodies, enjoying its sunshine, or walk- ing wretched in its gloom, according as we have adapted ourselves during our time-life ; — viewed philosophically, it is the same old beautiful world of God with which we are familiar under the name of earth and sky, only on a higher plane of creation, and prior to it. When we would think accurately of "Nature," we must not confine ourselves to the visible world. "Nature," in the full sense of the word, denotes whatever exists externally to the Creator, not having been planned by human contrivance, or executed by human labor, thus not only earth and sky, but the heavenly man- sions also. The one is physical nature ; the other, spiritual nature ; and the former presupposes the latter. The world, say rather the worlds, — those sjoarkling spheres we call the planets and the stars, — are not independent and original creations. Every one of them is derived and representa- tive, a sequence and disclosure of some anterior sphere in the spiritual world. Every object they contain is of similar history and origin, a figure demonstrating the spiritual, and supported by it. Not that the physical world is destitute of Reality. By no means the mere illusion of the mind which certain metaphysicians would have us believe, — for there are no quintessential metaphysics that can gainsay common sense, — the material world is emphatically a Real one. On the other hand, it is quite as wrong and unphilo- sophical to think of it, as many do, as primitive, independent, self-supporting. When we look on a beautiful landscape, we see mountains, trees, rivers, real and substantial as re- gards the material universe; nevertheless, only images of forms originally existing in a world which we do not see, and from which they are derived; — forms that are neither com- prised within material space, nor related to terrestrial time, — ■ forms which are as real, therefore, as the material; yea, infinitely more so, since the material is local and temporary, H » lY8 SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL SUBSTANCE. wliereas the spiritual is unlimited, and the home of immor- tality. Nothing exists except by reason of the spiritual world; whatever pertains to the material is purely and simply Effect ; — a fact in itself commending the spiritual to our philosophic curiosity and affection, since, — as all well know who are ever so little in the habit of meditating upon things not present to the bodily sight, — it is only by think- ing of the invisible 'productive powers, in connection with the resulting products, that the latter acquire true being, life, beauty, and physiognomical expression. Seeing how the material world changes, yet how permanent it is, we cannot persuade ourselves but that there must be an indestructible and vigorous something which underlies and from time to time refashions it, — something which is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Whatever shape a material organism may possess, nothing but spirit, we are well assured, can act. Only by virtue of force communicated from something spiritual, is matter, under any circumstances, consolidated and configured. In itself matter is unable to effect any- thing; it passes indifferently from mould to mould without retaining the shape of any. That invisible, potent some- thing cannot be a mere Energy either. A Cause, that is to say, an active, productive force, cannot be efficient unless it operate from and through a substance. If there be a spirit- ual world at all, it must be like the material world, substan- tial. Substance must not be confounded with matter. Sub- stance is a generic term ; matter is one of the species Avhich it includes. Substance is that which is indispensable to the being of a thing, as the continent of its sustaining life. For, to be is the same as to be alive, which is to be a recipient of life ; and wherever life is received, whether in the material w^orld or the spiritual, there must needs be a substance to receive it. Granted, the substance of the spiritual w^orld cannot be detected or defined scientifically. But that there SUBSTANCE AND MATTER. 179 is such a substance may nevertheless be affirmed, just as reasonably as when we hear Echo, we may affirm an echo- producing instrument. Spiritual substances are none the less real because out of the reach of chemistry or edge-tools, or because they are inappreciable by the organs of sense. Indeed it is only the grosser expressions of matter which can be so treated, and Avhich the senses can apprehend. Heat and electricity are as truly material as flint and granite, yet man can neither cut, nor weigh, nor measure them ; while the most familiar and abundant expression of all, the Air which we breathe, can neither be seen nor felt till put in motion. As for invisibility, which to the vulgar is the proof of non-existence, no warning is so incessantly addressed to us, from every department of creation, as not to commit the mistake of disbelieving simply because we cannot see. When we reflect how many things there are Avhich cannot be measured and comprehended even by Thought, which nevertheless are true, visibility to the material eye, as the test of reality, sinks to the least and lowest value. Each class of substances is real in relation to the world it belongs to; — material substances m the material world; spiritual substances in the spiritual world; and each kind has to be judged of according to-its place of abode. Distance in nature from the material no more disproves the existence of the spiritual, than distance in space disproves the existence of the bottom of the sea. The common notion of spirit is that of an attenuate form of matter; that it is what matter would become were it rarified into a perfectly free, fluent, unfixed, unbounded condition; and conversely, that matter is con- gealed or concreted spirit, bearing to it something of the same relation that ice does to steam, or a pastile to the fragrance into which it burns. Spirit and matter are utterly and incommensurably distinct; under no circumstances are 180 ART DERIVED FROM THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. they transformable or convertible.* To deny the existence of spiritual substance, is to assert that heaven is an empty void, whereas St. John represents it as a plenitude of objects and scenery, of the most substantial kind. It is to depopu- late it also of its angels, who if they be real enough to be persons, must assuredly be real enough to consist of sub- stance. Unless always upon the wing, they must likewise have a substantial surface whereon to stand. 107. Lying thus, at the back of the visible and sensible, the spiritual world is the universal fountain. Therein are contained "the invisible things of God," which are "clearly seen by the things that are made." Therein, likewise, are contained the "patterns" which Avere shown to Bezaleel in the mount. That history of Bezaleel has wonderful instruc- tion in it. What the spiritual world is to the spontaneous, objective forms of nature, it is also, we may gather from it, to Art, which like those forms, is not an oi'nament placed upon the surface of the world from without, or purely by man, but an outbirth from the unseen universe within ; just as the verdure of the fields is not a carpet laid down and spread over them, but an outvegetation of hidden seeds. All the men who have been greatest in Art have been dis- tinguished by their consciousness that they were merely reve- lators of spiritual facts. "Appeal to an artist, and ask him why he so painted any given heroic head, without any old "family portrait" to guide him. If he be a true artist, a race not numerous, he will say, "I could not do otherwise. That man had such a temper, such a life, in him. I, there- fore, mastering the inward spirit of the man, found his "•^ See, on the grossness of the popular error, its prevalence, and its evil tendencies, Barclay's " Inquiry into the Opinions, Ancient and Modern, concerning Life and Organization," chap, iii., sec. 11. (1822.) NATURAL THEOLOGY OF ART. 181 fashion and liis features created for me and given to me." Because such is the ultimate origin of the products of true art, of such, that is, as are something more than mere ser- vile, tradesmen's copies of familiar physical objects, there is a JSTatural Theology of Art. For Art, rightly understood, is a portion of nature, and genuine Natural Theology cannot take either part without the other.* Briefly, as the Soul is the essential Human Body, so is that grand, invisible, im- perishable fabric we call the spiritual, the essential World. The spiritual world is the total of Essential nature ; this visible, material world is a portion of Representative nature, a j)ortion only, because the little planet we call our oAvn is the covering of a very minute part indeed of the infinite spiritual realm which is its parent. Here we have but a few detached sketches of the panorama which belongs there, and what few we have, albeit they are so lovely, we see but " as through a glass, darkly." It will not be so always. The spiritual world known to philosojDhy is no other, as said before, than the spiritual world of the hopeful Christian — the very same which we shall consciously inhabit when by death we cease to be conscious of the present. Our intro- duction in this life to mineral, vegetable, and animal, to air, and sky, and sun, is the beginning of a friendship that will never be dissolved, only that hereafter we shall view things as they really are, instead of their efiigies and pic- tures. In this world we do not so much live as prepare to live, nor enjoy nature's sweet amenities so much SiS prepare to enjoy them. We shall leave it, but we shall not lose its beauty; we shall learn rather how most thoroughly to de- light in it, often turning in pleased remembrance to those * Excellently set forth in an article in the North American Ee- view for July, 1854, "On the moral significance of the Crystal Palace." 16 182 EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. early days which now we reckon as our "life-time," and to that little sphere which was our birth-place and education. 108. Philo Judseus calls upon us to observe that the deri- vation of the physical world from an anterior spiritual world is expressly taught in the book of Genesis : " These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, . . . and of every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and of every herb of the field before it greiv ;" wdiich words, says Philo, " do manifestly teach that before the earth was green, ver- dure already existed ; that before the grass sprang in the field, there was grass, though it was not visible. The same must we understand from Moses in the case of everything else which is perceived by the external senses ; there were elder forms and motions already existing, according to which the others were fashioned and measured out. The things which he has mentioned are examples of the nature of all."* 109. The evidence that there is a spiritual world under- lying the material, is quite as ready and plentiful as of the material world itself, if men will but look for it in the right place, and consent to receive it, for spectacles are less needed than willingness. It is rarely that incapacity hinders the reception of truth ; rather is it want of cordiality to give it Avelcome. We speak now, of course it will be understood, of the spiritual world as a truth of Philosophy, i. e., as the basis, as to first principles, of terrestrial nature. Most men believe in it under the name of " Heaven," or as a country which they will enter after death. Few, however, think of it in its relation to existing nature ; yet so to regard it is little less important to enlarged and encouraging views of Life, for it brings heaven into our daily thoughts, as a living, familiar, and practical Reality, a thought for the present, for the fields and the woods, for the hills and the valleys, instead On the Creation, Chap. xliv. EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WOELD. 183 of only for the future, at church on Sundays, and nothuig so fills the soul Avith bright ideas. How differently ihe minds of men are constituted with regard to particular kinds of truth, we are perfectly aware. Some are made to super- stition, some to enthusiasm, others are inapt for either ; so that what in many cases men fancy to be contest for " truth," is simply comparison of their mental tastes, just as they compare their physical likings over the dining-table, and fancy they are contending for what is best. Oftentimes, without question, this will account for their insolicitude. " Inductive minds," says Whewell, " those which have been able to discover laws of nature, have also commonly been ready to believe in an Intelligent Author of nature ; while deductive minds, those which have employed themselves in tracing the consequences of laws discovered by others, have been willing to rest in laws without looking beyond to an Author of laws." So with the views men take of the material world, its substance, derivation, and life. Deduc- tive minds are content with the study of matter ; inductive minds feel themselves invited to look further. But it is still a question of willingness, since nothing is ever sought except from the heart. There is something more even than willing- ness wanted. Before we can thoroughly recognize and ap- prove a truth superior to the region of the senses, our moral character must have risen into harmony with it. It follows that the spiritual Avorld is not a thing to be argued about. We should never argue with a man about things which require for their understanding a higher plane than he has risen to ; until he has lifted himself into the requisite soul, he cannot be expected to see with similar eyes. Show him how and where to learn, but do not argue with him till he is on a level Avith your own vision. Hence, too, the utter worthlessness of the usual objection to the doctrine of the spiritual world, that it has no place in popular systems of 184 PROOF IN ITS VARIOUS KINDS. philosophy. Some men reject it unconditionally — they simply " do not believe." It is very convenient to conceal incuriousness and ignorance under the name of scepticism, and thus invite the community to suppose that superior acuteness has detected unsoundness in what actually has never been even looked at. 110. Certainly, the joroofs of spiritual things are not of the same kind as those of material ones. A man must not exjDect the same species of proof that there are angels, as of the existence of a railway or a tree. What visible, sen- suous proof is to the material, philosophical induction is to the spiritual, and when this is assisted and borne out by Revelation, it is not merely as good a kind of proof, but an incomparably better and more cogent one. Not from the substance, time, and space of the material Avorld, is the spiritual world to be judged of. Like the soul, which is a dweller in it, it must be thought of purely fro7n the soul. This is the indispensable course in every inquiry that seeks to end in something better than grossest materialism. It is because people will persist in carrying their material ideas with them, wherever they go, that the soul itself has become a mere tradition, and the idea of immortality profaned into a supposed rebuilding of the rotten carcase of flesh and blood. While we should unceasingly strive to be men of sense, we should remember that this is not to be simply creatures of the senses. The external senses are among man's richest inheritances, still are they only the Fine stej^s whereby the Queenly Soul Comes down from her bright throne to view the mass She hath dominion over. The man who attends only to what his senses inform him of, imprisons and kills the better half of his nature. He may acquire tolerable knowledge of outlines, weights. Hn(i THE SENSES AND THE IMAGINATION. 18o colors, but a pliiloso^^her he can never be. With the dia- grams he may become conversant, but not with that sublime geometry and universal arithmetic, the constructions of which form the real history of nature. The philosophy which the outer senses teach, dwells where they do, on the surface of nature. Their business is simply with effects. Causes, and spiritual things are seen by the internal, poetic, seventh sense — that divine faculty which men call the Ima- gination, the clear-seeing spiritual eye whereby the loftier and inmost truths of the universe, whether they be scientific, or religious, or philosophical, can alone be discerned. We are apt to suppose that to acquaint ourselves with nature, dili- gent observation and experiment will sufiice. Not so. Na- ture has secrets which Imagination only can penetrate. So grievously has the imagination been perverted — so widely has the fancy been mistaken for it — so bad, in consequence, is its current repute as to its relation to Truth, that the mere mention of it, in connection with the subject in hand, will probably provoke many a smile, and in the charitable awaken compassion. It will be found, nevertheless, that all the greatest minds the world has produced, in any depart- ment of inquiry or of wisdom, have been so by virtue of their imagination. The imagination is not, as many sup- pose, hostile to truth. " So far from being an enemy to truth, the imagination," says Madame de Stael, " helps it forward more than any other faculty of the mind." Of course there are such things as diseased and prostituted imaginations, but the abuse of the faculty is neither its qua- lity or design. Imagination rightly so called, presupposes an enlarged and tranquil mind, which having in its command a wide property in living nature and its laws, steps to un- discovered things from the standard of the knoAvn. " That," says Goethe, " is no true imagination which goes into the vague, and devises things that do not exist." Reason, or to 16* 186 FUNCTIONS OF THE IMAGINATION. use a preciser term, common sense, the very arbiter of Truth, and, imagination, rightly regarded, are each other's coDi'plement. To esteem them as contrary comes of the very same mistake as that which asserts reason and faith to be foes. As the perfection of human nature is, in the body, the union of strength and beauty, so in the intellect is it the union of common sense and imagination. Again deceiving themselves, many suppose that the imagination is constantly needing a check. Say rather that it constantly needs the spur. Especially is this the case in Science and Religion, "which instead of having suffered, as it has been taught, from excess of imagination, sutler rather from not being as hos- pitable to it as they ought. What is idolatry, but inapti- tude to rise, on the pinions of the imagination, from the symbol to the thing symbolized ? What other than imagi- nation is the soul and. centre of the very highest act of reli- gion, or faith ? To science, to philosophy also, imagination is nothing less than pioneer. The Columbus of the human mind, imagination opens the way for observation and. expe- riment, which left to themselves, know not in what direc- tion to proceed, and find their way, if at all, slowly and by accident ; it j)rovides us with the clue to what we seek, and enables us to anticipate the answer we shall receive. Every true investigation is the working out of some noble idea of the imagination ; no great discovery was ever made without employing it. It is the vital characteristic of the Davys, the Owens, the Faradays, the Herschels — of all to whom the world is indebted for its highest scientific wealth. Genius itself might be defined as imagination well directed and well regulated. With all his science, so called, the ^m-imagina- tive man gives us only the osteology of the rainbow; it is the imaginative or poetic one who delineates its life and beauty. Like prisms, the men of imagination convert colorless light into exquisite hues ; in their hands does the merest matter THE HIGHEST TRUTHS BEYOND PROOF. 187 of prosaic detail become lustrous and glorified. Witness Garth Wilkinson's noble book on the Human Body, which, were it re-written in verse, would be the finest poem in the world. Like its subject, it is matter and spirit united, and " common sense" from beginning to end. 111. To attempt, therefore, to j)rove that there is a spiritual world, i. e., in the way that a material or physical thing is proved, is, after all, superfluous. Those to whom it is inte- resting are conscious of it of themselves ; and the opposite class logic Avould make no wiser. In a certain sense it is above and beyond proof; yet not strangely and peculiarly so. Not one of the greatest truths admits of proof commonly so called. We feel them. The highest of all, or the conscious- ness of God, we ascend into intuitively from our conscious- ness of self That God exists, and that it was he who created the world, and who sustains it, we can neither "prove" to another, nor have "proved" to ourselves; and the same with the soul, and the spiritual world, and the life to come. For what, in fact, is it " to prove," but to trace a subordinate proposition up to a higher, or rather, to a primary truth ? The nearer that proposition is to God and heaven, the further is it away from Avhat is proveable. Were we, in short, to refuse to receive anything until "joroved," we should remain strangers for ever to the noblest and most animating subjects of contemplation. Proof, rigid, mathematical proof, belongs only to inferior truths, and it is only inferior minds that make it the condition of their acceptance. If such minds be often characterized by their credulity, they are still oftener marked by their fncredulity. "Ignorance is always incredulous; the amplest knowledge has the largest faith." It is right, without doubt, to desire proof; it is a man's duty to desire it; but then he must remember that many things are itnproveable, or rather, that things are proveable in dif- ferent ways. The lieart and imagination have their eyes as 188 SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. well as the head and the understanding. Great minds, or those in which the capacity for reading truth is quickest and highest, are not simply " intellectual" minds. They know what they have to believe on the showing of the feelings and the imagination, and of such things they never demand " proof." Not he is the wise man who cunningly thinks to take nothing on the word of the imagination, but he who takes what nature intends he should. The proof, the essen- tial and best proof of the divine origin of Christianity and the Bible, does not consist in those weary piles denominated the Evidences, historical, archseological, and so forth, which commend themselves only to low and unenviable schools of thought, but in its felt adaptation to the needs and aspira- tions of the soul. 112. Scientific considerations may be adduced notwith- standhig, both in proof of the Spiritual world, and of its causative action into the johysical. Why have many ani- mals, especially the saurians, the power of reproducing amputated members? How is it that when the foot or the tail of a lizard is torn off, a new one sprouts in its place ? One of two things, either " nature performs a miracle," which is an indolent hypothesis ; or else, which is a sufficient and reasonable explanation, material substances mould them- selves universally upon preexistent spiritual forms, as upon a model, and wait upon them as servitors. The reason usually assigned, namely, that the lower we descend in the scale of organization, the more is life diffused throughout the organism, is correct to a certain jDoint, but it leaves the enigma where it was. It is not enough to be told that in the lower animals the vital mass which appears as brain in the higher kinds, is dispersed throughout the body ; and that it is owing to this dispersion of the great centre of life into many small, separate centres, that the tentacula of polyps, the rays of the star-fish, the entire head of the snail, wili PLANTS IN RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 189 grow again if cut off. The question still remains — nhj? Life, like any human constructive power, cannot work with- out a pattern ; nervous centres are but instrumental.* Why the wonderful privilege of replacing lost members of the body is enjoyed only by the lower tribes of animals, and not by the higher, is that the latter are enabled to make them- selves amends for such losses in other ways. The office of one limb or member, to an extent sufficient to the necessities of life, can, in effect, be executed by another; while man, for his part, has the resources of mechanical contrivance in addition. The more helpless a creature is, the more amply is it always befriended with compensating gifts. 113. So with plants. Why does the acorn always produce an oak, and never an elm or an ajople-tree ; why the bulb of the hyacinth always the verisimilitude of its fragrant cluster, and never a cowslip or fleur-de-lis? Simply because in the acorn the spiritual substratum of the oak already in effect exists ; and in the bulb, in like manner, the spiritual form or vegetable soul of the flower. Hence the multifor- mity of the beautiful pictures in wood and field, and their return to us, year by year. Every wild flower comes back in its perfect lineaments; in the early spring the golden celandine and the coltsfoot; then the MayfloAver and the Avoodruff, then the forget-me-not, bathing its feet at the water-side; and so onwards till the purple crocus of October. True, they unfold themselves from roots and seeds, lying concentrated as it Avere till their proper season; but Avanting a spiritual form to clothe Avith stem and leaf, a seed could * The power of reproducing lost parts which made that beautiful little creature the Hydra such a miracle to first observers, and sug- gested its zoological name, appears to exist in scarcely inferior de- gree in the Actinias or Sea-anemones. On its prevalence in the Star- fishes consult Forbes. 190 tiPlRITUAL FORMS UNDERLYING MATERIAL. no more grow than a grain of sand. The real reason of the flowers is that every line of beauty in nature is the expres- sion of a divine thought, and inherits the immortality of its first development in the spiritual world. It is in spiritual philosophy, and in this only, that we have an answer also to the puzzling question, why it is that the mules, or hybrids, both animal and vegetable, cannot permanently produce themselves ; why also the graft will only consort with a tree of the same species as itself Material forms may be coupled, and a cross be procured for a brief period, but it is impos- sible in the same way to establish sjm'itual forms, and with- out these, as their prototypes, material forms cannot be pro- pagated. The best introduction to knowledge of what con- stitutes a "species," either in Zoology or Botany, is to be sought in the philosophy of spirit, and its relation to matter, 114. So even with inorganic forms. Why do salts and metals always crystallize in determinate shapes, their pro- portions and angles invariably the same? Let a number of different salts be dissolved in water, and they will sort themselves out, unassisted, and re-adjust and re-crystallize their particles in the precise polyhedra they originally pos- sessed. Clearly, as in the former case, this is because there are underlying spiritual forms, sustained by the Divine life, and which, by virtue of that life, draw the particles together, each to its own body. The terms chemical afiinity, chemical attraction, power, property, agency, vis formatrix, &e., cur- rently used Avhen speaking of the consolidation of inorganic matter, denote nothing more than the action of the Divine life, i;nder difierent methods, through the medium of spiritul creations in the first place. 115. On the dim and half-traditional perce]Dtion that or- ganic forms repose upon an interior spiritual form, was built the Alchemists' beautiful doctrine of the palingenesis, or resuscitation by art, of the spirits of plants and flowers. THE alchemist's DOCTRINE OF PALINGENESIS. 191 "Never," says the historian of the Curiosities of Literature, "was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite jyalingeneds of the admirable school of Borelli, GafTarel, and Digby." The way in which the resuscitation was supposed to be brought about, was to burn a flower to ashes, and place them in a phial; then to add a certain chemical mixture, and warm it; when there would slowly rise a delicate apparition of stalk, and leaf, and blossom, successively, fiiithful as the lovely transcripts of scenery in still water, "the phantastical j)l^iit" disappearing into no- thingness as the heat gradually declined. Southey, in the second volume of the " Omniana," gives a full account both of the doctrine and of the manij^ulation requisite to pro- duce these curious phantoms. That they were actually exhibited by the alchemists, there would seem to be no doubt; having been produced, it is not unlikely, by tracing the figures of the plants and flowers on the glass reputed to contain their spirits, with chloride of cobalt, drawings made with which salt are invisible till brought near the fire. So firmly was the doctrine held by the honest, that it was adduced as an argument for the resurrection of man.* Perhaps the Hamadryads of ancient poetry, uymphs who were born with trees when they rose out of the ground, who lived in them, and Avho died when thexj died, Avere but their spiritual forms, separated and j)ersonified by fancy. " Trees," ■^ Disraeli's account of the Palingenesis is under the head " Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy." On the practical part of it, see Boyle's Philosophical Works, abridged, vol. i., p. 69, "Surpris- ing things performable by Chemistry," and the Philosophical Trans- actions for 1674, vol. ix., p. 175. Palingenesis, as a word, is simply the Greek for resurrection, learnedly illustrated by Mr. Trench in his New Testament Synonymes. Tlieodore de Kycke applies it to the revival of letters, "Oratio de palingenesis Literarum in Terris nostris." Leyden, 1672. 192 MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM. says a lively Frenchman, "are animated; they ha.ve their enjoyments, their grief, their sleep, and their loves. The ancients placed a nymph under their rind. To be sure she is there-! Life is a very pretty nymph; Ave ought to love her wherever she is found." How beautifully does another of the same country allude to his love of trees, and their influence on his imagination, regretting that there are no longer any Dryads, or it would have been among these that he would have formed an attachment in which his heart should find its home.* 116. In fine, recognition of the spiritual world, as the foundation of the material one, and in connection with it, of the momentary influx of the Divine life into every ob- ject and atom of creation, the spiritual world receiving that life primarily, and the material world by derivation from it, is the beginning of all genuine philosophy. Unperceiving these two great, fundamental truths, the whole kingdom of truth is beclouded : only as men learn to appreciate and to apply them, does their knowledge begin to live. "What but apparitions," says Coleridge, "can belong to a philoso- phy which satisfies itself when it can explain nature me- clmnically, that is, by the laws of Death, and brands with the name of Mysticism every solution grounded in Life?" "As Nature," says Dr. Braun, "without man, presents externally only the image of a labyrinth without a clue, scientific examination which denies the internal, spiritual foundations of nature, leads only to a chaos of unknown matters and forces. From this dark chaos no bright path leads up." Yet, ordinarily, it is precisely the live facts from Avhich men of science turn away! "Nothing is more evident," says one of the shrewdest writers of our day, " than that the men of facts are afraid of a large number of * Kosseau. Confessions, book ix. MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM. 193 important facts. All the spiritual facts about us, of which there are plenty, are denounced as superstition. Not only are they not received by that courtesy which takes off its grave hat to a new beetle or a fresh vegetable alkaloid, but they are treated by it worse than our vermin." "We do not seek to disparage the efforts of the non-spiritual. Whoever faithfully explains one of "the things that do appear," assists in explaining the hidden and invisible ones which are not seen, and deserves approbation and gratitude accord- ingly. Let him, with equal courtesy, not undei-value the efforts of the "spiritual;" falling into the error of those "fools" and "blind" of old, who knew not whether was greater, the gold of the temple, or the temple that sanctified the gold. The "spiritualist" may seem mad to the material- ist, — and mad he is, if merely a spiritualist; but how much more sane is the mere man of science, who seeking the living among the dead, values the tabernacle more than the occu- pying spirit? 17 I CHAPTER XI GROTJJSTDS OF THE VAIilOZTS LEASE OF I^IFE— Continued, CORJtESFOKDENCE OF NATUItE AND MIND. 117. Correspondence, or the science of the relation of the two worlds, i. e., of the objects and phenomena of the material, to the typical forms and noumena of the spiritual, is the key and Open Sesame! to every species of human knowledge. With correspondence for our guide, perhaps nothing is absolutely unintelligible; without it, the com- monest things are clouded. To right conceptions of the un- seen it is indispensable at the very outset. Most of the metaphysical difficulties which surround revealed theology, really originate in neglecting the light which Correspondence is fitted to throw upon them ; the phenomena of the senses find in it their only true solution. Vast as nature itself, of course it can here be only commended to minds zealous in pursuit of genuine wisdom, except in so far as relates to the lease of life. 118. To this end it will suffice that we consider the pa7'ti- cular correspondence, derived from the general, which nature holds with the faculties and emotions of the Soul, that won- derful and delicious concord whereby the sunshine, the sea, everything in nature is so companionable, and which gives to the soul a kind of omnipresence. The ground of this concord is that man, as to first principles, is a synthesis of the spiritual world, and thus of the material world which clothes and represents it. As a concave mirror contains 194 NATURE A SECOND HOMO. 195 pictures in little of all the thousand objects of a beautiful landscape, so in the soul of man is contained an epitome of all the forces and principles that underlie tlie works of God, whether visible or invisible. The poets and philosophers call him a microcosm, or " little world ;" " the kingdom of heaven," says holy writ, "is within you." External nature is not the independent thing, having no connection with man, which we are apt to suppose. It is at once a second logos, and a second homo. It is so varied, so lovely, so ex- quisitely organized, because of the variety, the loveliness, the exquisite composition, primarily of the spiritual world, secondly of the human soul. The sun, the stars, trees, flowers, the sea, rivers, animals, exist, not irrespectively and independently of man, but because of him. In him are all of these, along with spring, summer, autumn, and winter, light and darkness, heat and cold, all natural objects and phenomena whatever, only after another manner, felt instead of seen, as sentiments and emotions, instead of physical in- carnations. Were they not in him, there would be none of them anywhere else. "Had I not had the Avorld in my soul from the beginning," says Goethe, "I must ever have remained blind Avith my seeing eyes, and all experience and observation would have been dead and unproductive. The light is there, and the colors surround us, but if Ave bore nothing corresponding in our OAvn eyes, the outAvard appa- rition Avould not avail." When, therefore, aa'C admire nature, Avhen Ave loA^e it, it is Adrtually admiration of the spiritual and immortal, and this is Avhy the love of nature is so powerful a help toAvards loAdng God. Hence also the concurrence of Science and Metaphysics, Avhich are con- cerned with things essentially the same, only presented under different aspects and conditions. So intimate is the corres- pondence even betAveen the body of man, and the faculties of the soul, that Klencke has built upon it an entire system 196 THE UNIVERSE A HIEROGLYPH. of organic psychology, incited perhaps by the hint of Lord Bacon, when he says that "unto all this knowledge of the concordances between the mind and the body, that part of the inquiry is the most necessary Avhich considereth of the seats and domiciles which the several faculties do take and occupy." We little think how near, by correspondence, the body is like the soul, and the soul like the spiritual world. Novalis says truly that " we touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body." Think how the face is the epi- tome of the body, repeating in little its every organ and every function, and we see why the face is of all natural mysteries the very grandest. That plants and animals were created, and light and darkness ordained prior to the crea- tion of man, is no objection to their being effects or results of him, because although the last to be actually moulded, he was the first in conception and plan, all the works of Almighty wisdom being prefigurative of His own image and likness. 119. It is no new doctrine that such a concord or corres- pondence exists between nature and the soul of man ; it is no new discovery ; neither is it a deduction from any new or narrow circle of experiences. " The world at large is the school that believes in it, and daily life, in all its immense detail, is the theatre of its exemplification." Language rests entirely upon the sublime fact that the universe is a hieroglyph and metaphor of human nature; there is no poetry that has not sprung from the deep feeling of it, and that does not owe to it all its eloquence and graces ; all philosophy implies and unconsciously proclaims it ; the magic, idolatry, and mythology of the primsevals ; the " language of flowers," emblems, fable, allegory, the rites and ceremonies of religion, are all founded upon it, and are alone explicable by it. It is no less the ground of our most living enjoyments. The sweetness of a kind look, the solace CORRESPONDENCE THE GROUND OF FRIENDSHIP. 197 of a loving smile, come purely of tlie correspondence of the features with the soul within ; the pleasure we derive from music, scenery, flowers, comes of our feeling, when in their presence, the " sweet sense of kindred." The light of the soul, like the light of the sun, makes everything beautiful on which it shines, but it is by being reflected from it. As we can only give to others what they can take, so can we only be affected by what is congenerous to ourselves — the secret of all loves, friendshijJS, and social unions. The in- most spring of our attachments to one another is our Cor- resjDondence. Hence, too, that beautiful innate image in the heart of the beings we most deeply and permanently love, which gives to our first sight of them almost a sense of recognition. Some are never strangei's, But soon as seen, the soul as if by instinct Springs towards them with resistless force, and owns Congenial sympathy. 120. Save for the unity of the mind with the inmost, spiritual essence of the world, nature would not only be in- comprehensible to man — not only be no object of his intelli- gence, but not even an object of his consciousness. Only by virtue of our correspondence with nature do we become familiar with it. There can be no reciprocation where there is no similarity. Were it not a mirror, it would be a void, as to the brutes it really is, since they see it not, and feel it not. Not that there is any of our proper life in the things of nature. They are instinct with sjDiritual vitality, but only in man is spiritual vitality exalted into spiritual Life, since he alone is intelligent of God. Doubtless there is great diversity in men's estimate and appreciation of natural objects, and thence in the pleasure derived from them, but this so much the more substantiates the principle. Why 17* 198 CORKESPONDENCE A MORAL AGENT. some minds are most delighted by flowers, others by birds, others by mountains, others by trees, even by particular species of living things, as when one loves above all other birds the industrious, sociable rooks, it is that the corre- spondent spiritual principles are in those minds preeminently developed. The whole of nature is in every mind, but some one part of it more actively than the remainder ; while all men are joint heritors of the total of the world, every man has a little piece of it to himself. Every man has a secret affinity, a secret love, a secret pleasure, known in its fiillness and rewards, like his conscience, only to himself and to his Maker. Were we wise, this great principle would be made the basis of Education, which should never fail to respect the correspondences of individual minds, and cannot be ex- pected to be efficient till it is recognized. The efficacy of C( rrespondence is truly wonderful. While new feelings are awakened, old, familiar ones are heightened and improved by the presence of the natural object that represents them. Beneath the still skies of night we become more reverent ; looking at the green leaves of spring, more young in hope. Why do the tenderly-attached find such happy hours in sweet, sequestered, rural pathways, where the wild flowers blow, and the clear streams ripple, if it be not that nature mirrors and echoes their affections, and enriches them with a new enthusiasm ? Hence it is also that those who love tenderly always feel peculiarly endeared to one another while participating in the admiration of works of Art, which, fulfilling the highest end of Art, namely, to excite emotions, and not merely awaken recollection, speak to the soul by their true grandeur. A chief reason why so much originally good feeling becomes chilled and debased, is that we do not oftener quit the world that man has made, for the company of our kindred in the world that God made. Im- muring ourselves in the narrow boundary of our parlors, SIGNIPICANCE OF EXTERNAL NATURE. 199 we cannot properly expand ; " in the presence of nature we feel great and free, like that which we have before our eyes." Things again, which away from their correspondent imagery seem weak and trifling, in its presence become beautiful and noble. " Love-scenes," says an amiable writer, " such as in a parlor look foolish and absurd, assume a very different aspect when seen amid the soft hush and spiritual beauties of an evening river-side, or in tl; ; light of an autumn moon. We feel then that the beautiful picture has received its proper setting. Who has forgotten the moonlight scene in the Merchant of Venice, or the interview of Waverley and Flora near the waterfall ?" Lastly, it is in the convergence towards him of all its nature and attributes, that the thoughtful man finds the dignity of the world consist. " He reads the mystery of human existence in the relations of the forms which encompass him ; and discovers the solution of nature's problems in his own physical and mental activi- ties." Lie sees that it is the same life which connects events and phenomena, whether in him or without him, and with the change from terrestrial to human, finds it glorify. 121. External nature being then what we find it, by vir- tue of previous ideas and affections in the world of spirit, and of its synthesis, the human soul, the phenomena, changes, and vicissitudes which take place in it, will be so many correspondences and translations of what occurs there. Here, accordingly is the first solution of the problem of the lease of life. Why the oak and the elephant live so long ; why the gourd and the insect die so soon, is that the princi- ples, sentiments, and emotions in the human soul to which these things severally correspond, are of the same relative constitution and capacity of endurance. How many are the emotions which we feel, year by year, growing and strength- ening within us, like noble trees ; how many others do we feel spring up, blossom, and pass away like the day-lily ! 200 THE LAW OF USE. The whole matter of the "growth of the mind" is translata- ble into the history of the growth of nature, its changes, de- cays, and rejuvenescences. What is longseval in the soul, is longaeval also in nature; what is ephemeral in the world, is the picture of something ephemeral in ourselves. 122. The law of Use, wherein consists the second grand cause of the diversity in the lease of life, is like Correspond- ence, vast as creation itself, seeing that subserviency to an- other's wants and happiness is the purpose for which all things have been designed, and the world framed and me- thodized so admirably. The greater the amount of the dif- ference between any two or more objects, the stronger is the proof of their necessity as regards the general welfare, and thus of their having some special use in their respective spheres, whether Ave can perceive the exact nature of it or not. The difference, for example, between an elephant and a rose, and between a rose and a pebble, is the precise measure of their value and importance in the collective economy and constitution of things. Wherein these two qualities consist, of course is a separate matter of inquiry, and falls to the province of the accurate observer of nature. 123. All uses are referable to one or other of three great ends ; they were designed for these ends, and they are per- petually promotive of them. The first is the physical wel- fare of the living organisms of our j)lanet ; the second, the instruction and delight of man; the third, which presupposes and ensues upon the other two, is the glory of God who or- dained them, and for whose " pleasure " all things were cre- ated. Physical uses comprise all those by which things reciprocally sustain one another in health and comeliness, and jDreserve their respective races extant upon the earth. The soil supports the plant ; the plant feeds the animal ; both repay all that is rendered them, and Avith interest; and strengthened by Avhat they have received, succor their OAvn DEATH NEEDFUL TO HUMAN HAPPINESS. 201 species. According to tlie needs of each superior thing is the adaptation of every inferior one that supports it, as re- gards structure, configuration, and vital economy; every plant and animal, every bird and tree, every mineral even, is so constituted as to enable it to minister to a nobler na- ture ; the term of its life is exactly adequate and proportion- ate to its office, and concludes when the duties of that office have been fulfilled. The tree that provides timber lives for centuries ; the corn required for food is ripe in a summer. 124. Nature ministers to the instruction and delight of man by shadoAving intellectual and religious truth ; and this great use it most efiiciently subserves in the circumstance of its incessant change. Change, at least in the material world, implies death ; and death, for its full efiicacy and im- pressiveness as a monitor, needs to be various and wonderful as life. Were there no such thing as external nature, man would be an irremediably ignorant savage ; he becomes ci- vilized and intelligent by the just contemplation of its mys- teries. Nature is the grand, rich book of symbols which we prove it, not simply in the significance of its forms, but in the significance and lessons of the phenomena of its mortal- ity. Were all things like the granite mountain-peaks, that have caught the first beams of immemorial morning suns, enduring forever, though we might wonder more, our love and true spiritual activity would be less. The very frailty of things excites a tender interest in them, and when to this is joined an almost endless diversity as to the period of their stay, they become to us store-houses of curious Avisdom and satisfaction. Where would be the gladness of the spring if the primroses blossomed throughout the year, or the gran- deur of the ancient woods if the trees were but children of the summer ? Man is a thousand times happier from the fact of some plants being annuals, others perennials, others longseval trees, than were all to die at a common age. I* 202 DEATH A BENEFICENT ORDINATION. 125. Finally is the use of all things in reference to the glory of their Almighty Framer ; and this, as in the pre- ceding case, is exalted by what to a small and narrow view, is their very weakness. Why the mass of organic nature is so brief-lived, why it seems to exist only to die, is that, taking a thousand years together, the amount of enjoyment (or of picturesque on the part of what is not competent to enjoy), shall be greater than were it to survive for the whole period. The larger the number of beings that enter the world, whether by fertility of individuals, or by successive renewals, one generation after another, so much the more scope is there for that happiness and j)hysical beauty which it is the Divine "pleasure" to communicate and sustain. Doubtless, a solitary tree, a single animal of each kind, or of any kind, attests the hand of God as powerfully as a world-full, and a single generation as powerfully as a hun- dred ; but God is essential Love, and the nature of love is to give ; its satisfaction is to surround itself with receptacles for the blessings which it burns to bestow, and in a finite kingdom such receptacles are best multijDlied — perhajDS only BO — by the magnificent' institutions of Death and Renewal, whereby myriads are successively introduced upon the scene, instead of a few antique and venerable ones remaining al- ways. It is infinitely more to the glory of God that ten men should live for seventy years a-piece, one after another, than that there should be only one instead of ten in the same period. It makes ten happy lives instead of only one, for seventy years properly used, are as good as seven hun- dred. In a word, whatever advantage it is to man's wel- fare, either physical or moral, that the lease of life should be various, is also a glory to God, because all human en- lightenment and delight shine back upon the heaven of their origin. 126. A question yet remains in connection Avith this sub- LEASES OF EXTINCT ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 203 ject, namely, — Let the maximum duration of the individuals constituting a species be what it may, — a few months or a thousand years, — does a period arrive in the history of the species when, like a title of nobility without an heir, it abso- lutely "dies out," every individual becoming extinct? Geo- logy makes it plain that during the infinite past, species of animals' and plants now no longer existing, successively occupied the surface of the earth, in considerable variety and amazing numbers; the legitimate conclusion is, there- fore, in favor of the afSrmative. How long the particular species now alive have been upon the earth, how long they will continue, man can neither know nor surmise ; it is suf- ficient for the principle that they can be shown to have had pi'edecessors, and that those predecessors have wholly dis- appeared from the ranks of the living. The highest interest attaches to the existing organic population of the world, both as to its beginning and its final destiny. The origin of noxious plants and animals; the descent of the various races from a single individual or a single pair of each kind, or on the other hand, from a plurality ; their dispersion over the earth's surface; the extermination of different species by the hand of man ; and many similar matters, treated as they deserve, would suffice to fill whole volumes. Here they must be dismissed Avith the bare mention. 127. The general question as to the lease of life in species being answered, there arise upon the solution other and more curious problems : — What were the leases of those anterior species? — Why have they not continued to the present time? -^Under what laws were the new and superseding forms in- troduced? Geology solves them in part, or as regards the proximate, physical reasons; and no portion of this noble science is more interesting and satisfactory. But Geology of itself is insufficient; we are compelled to fall back, as in everything else, on the spiritual laws of which physical ones 204 THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD. are Effects. Then we find that the same laws which pri- marily determine the duration of the individuals of a species, determine also the duralLon of the species as a whole. They are problems no less magnificent than vast, if only from the immensity of time covered by the events and changes they have reference to. Six thousand years, or thereabout, the period we are accustomed to regard as com- prising the history of life, and as taking us to the beginning of creation, is in reality but the pathway to a point from which we look forth on an expanse without horizon. Yet not hopelessly, because with all the sublime antiquity in the works of the Almighty, stretching so far back, and upon a scale so grand, there is indissolubly connected the fact of his TJnchangeableness, assuring us that he was always employed as now; that we shall find all in perfect harmony; that all that exists, as worlds, systems of worlds, contents of worlds, to-day, is but a continued exemplification of original and eternal principles; thus that all lies within the reach and compass of our understanding. 128. The spiritual laws alluded to are again those of Correspondence and of Use, which apply to the ante-hominal world no less than to the existing state of things. The pre- Adamite plants and animals, like those which now surround us, were material shows of forms contained in the spiritual world, flowing from them in the same manner, and possessed therefore of similar afiinities with principles and affections in the soul of man, which is the spiritual world in little. For though later in production, as to time, man virtually and essentially preceded every Spirifer and Trilobite, every Coralline and Conferva. Prior to all worlds, man is the oldest idea in creation ; nothing was ever moulded into form, or vitalized by the Divine bi-eath, that had not a prefigura- tive reference to something eventually to be exhibited in hi7n. The geological history of our planet is the biography GEOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 205 of human nature, told in the imagery of correspondence; all those great phenomena of stratification, disruption, change of surface, and succession of living being, which make the annals of our earth such glorious reading, are to the true reader a narrative in symbol of his own emotional and intellectual development. From the time when darkness was upon the face of the deep, through all the grand sequences of light, land and water, vegetation and animal life, the record is of man's advance from the state of vacant infancy up to that of ripe and opulent maturity. Did we know the particular correspondence of the extinct plants and ani- mals that once lived upon the earth, we should discern in every one of them a picture of something in the mind or heart of childhood; we should comprehend the scheme of sequence in which they successively appeared, the ground of their various duration, why they were of such and such figure, habits, and degree of bulk. The great size of many of the pre-Adamite animals, and their strange and unshapely forms, consist, we may see at a glance, with the wild, am- bitious phantasies of early youth, when the Arabian Nights are thought to be solid facts ; — the small number of distinct species, relatively to the present numbers, corresponds with its scanty stock of emotional experiences and ideas. Who is there that, wandering through the museums of memory, is not reminded of the time when the plains of his little world were trod by gigantic Mastodons and Dimotheria, and when in place of its now innumerable flowers and fruit-trees, there were only huge Calamites and Sigillarias. Thus will it be that Correspondence, in the ratio that men study this matchless science, will throw light on the history of the fossil fauna and flora of our globe. Its companion law, the great principle of Use, rightly brought to bear, will supply what more is wanting. For all these ancient forms of life had their uses to subserve, and doubtless their respective leases 18 206 LEASES COMMENSURATE WITH USES. were adapted to them. The plants, for example, whose compacted and bitumenized relics constitute Coal, must have been gifted with a duration and a prolific power commen- surate with the use they were destined to in the remote future; and the magazmes once filled and covered in they would cease from living occupancy of the soil. CHAPTER XII. TBLID SPIBITUAL EXPRISSSION OF I.IFE, — NATT7ItE AND SEAT OF THE SOUL. 129. The spiritual expression of life is the prerogative of MAN. It is tlie gift which distinguishes him from all other animals; just as the organic life is that which distinguishes those animals, together with plants, and his own material body, from earth and stone. By virtue of his spiritual life, man is an emotional and intellectual being. By virtue of this he thinks, speaks, sings,* worships, loves, pities, weeps,t hopes, laughs, marries ; performs, in a word, the innumerable actions, internal and external, which the observation of thousands of years has never once detected in any of the in- ferior orders of creation, but has established as the noble diagnosis of human nature. This also is the primary ground of his physical peculiarities. By virtue of his possessing a Soul, animated with spiritual life, the spine of man has those wonderful curves in it, and that curious pyramidal arrange- ment of bones, whereby he is enabled to stand erect. The more complicated brain than any other of the mammalia have; the smoothness and nakedness of his skin; the pecu- liar muscle for the extension of the fore-finger; the capacity for being tickled, and for blushing; smiles and kisses; the * Birds only whistle ; tliey do not sing. J The occasional flow of a few tears from the eyes of certain quad- rupeds, is not iveeping, the true idea of which implies intelligent emotion, and strength rather than weakness. 207 208 THREE DEGREES OF LIFE IN MAN. breast of woman, so exquisitely unlike that of any other female animal, both in its shape during the flower of her age, and the longer retention of its normal form after the period of lactation; all these have their essential origin in that inner and regal life which links earth to heaven. Flowing from God cotemporaneously, the spiritual and the organic life are the same in essence, the difference between them is simply one of expression. As played forth by the body, it is Organic life; as played forth by the soul, it is Spiritual life. Man, while a resident in the material world, is a recipient, therefore, not merely of one, nor even of two, but of three expressions of the Divine sustaining energy. Chemical afiinity, cohesion, molecular attraction, &c., which are its lowest expression, sustain the elemental ingredients of his frame, the carbon, water, lime, and so forth. Organic life arranges and builds ujd those ingredients into apparatus, and impels the several jDortions to the due performance of some fixed duty. Spiritual life, which is the highest expres- sion, vitalizes and energizes his soul ; impelling it, after the same manner, to the exercise of its intellect and affections. The knowledge of the lowest expression of life constitutes Physics ; that of the organic, Physiology ; that of the highest or spiritual, Psychology. The latter may be defined as the science of the Life of God in man's soul; physiology as that of the Life of God in his body. And as that life is essen- tially One, psychology and physiology, in their high, philo- sophic idea, are connected as soul and body, and each is an exponent of the other. What in relation to physiological life, are called the "functions of the body," or the "functions of organization," re-appear in relation to the spiritual life, as the "intellectual powers," the "operations of the mind," &c., which are the same thing essentially, only expressed after a higher manner, according to the law of discrete de- grees. Functions in the body, faculties in the soul; the NATURE AND SEAT OF THE SOUL. 209 terms alter as the theatre changes. Doubtless there are broad distmctions m the mode of their procession. The phenomena of "which physiology takes cognizance are both simultaneous and successive; those which belong to psycho- logy are successive only. "Physiological phenomena ex- hibit themselves as an immense number of series bound up together; psychological phenomena as but a single series. Thus, the continuous actions of digestion, circulation, respi- ration, &c., are also synchronous; but the actions constituting Thought occur, not simultaneously, but one after another." Taken together, physiology and psychology meet as Philo- sophy, or the science of the antecedent unity of which the spiritual and the material are the dual development. 130. The spiritual expression of life is a perfectly distinct thing from the soul; which is no mere "principle," either of intelligence as regards this world, or of immortality as regards the next; but a definite, substantial entity, as much a part of created nature as a flower or a bird ; and so far from being Life, or even possessing any inherent or separate life, depends for existence, no less than the body which en- closes it, on continually renewed supplies from the Creator. "The inner man drops into metaphysical dust, as the outer man into physical, unless the parts be kept in coherence by some sustaining life; and that latter is no other than the life of the living God." In itself, the soul is neither immor- tal nor indestructible. However common such epithets may be in books and sermons, the Bible knows nothing of them ; though it unquestionably teaches that God having once created a soul, it pleases him to sustain it with life for ever ; and to allow it to exercise that life freely, as if it were its own, just as the free exercise of the organic life is allowed to the body. The possession respectively of independent life and of derived life, constitutes the grand characteristic by which we distinguish at all times and in all places, between 18 » 210 POrULAR IDEAS CONCERNING THE SOUL. the Creator and the created. If not a generally-received distinction, even among philosophers, that the soul is one thing and its life another is at least the doctrine of the New Testament, where the Divine, vitalizing essence is discrimi- nated as C^'f], while the vessel into which it is communicated is called by some such name as (po-^r]. Thus, Tiveufia ^corji; ix TOO dedo ecarjXdev iv auzdc:;, "the spirit of life from God entered into them;" (Rev. xi. 11,) r«c ^f5)f«C tmv 7ie7ie,le'AcvpiTiSs;, t'lcpo/potroi, flivTTVOOi, ipidi'pal, K.T.X., the introduction of this one word is enough to announce him Poet. Now-a-days a man can adopt epithets from a thousand predecessors ; the Greek had only nature, and his own apt, living, luxuriant heart. Virgil not only illustrates the origin of the word spirit, but its several applications. SPIRIT AND ITS COGNATE TERM. 233 Thus, as given to the breath, in that charming description where Iris, mingling with the exiled Trojan ladies as they walk mourning by the sea, though she has laid aside her goddess' vestments, and personates a decrepid old woman, is still unable to conceal herself: Non Beroe vobis, non hsec Rlioeteia, matres Est Dorycli conjux : divini signa decoris, Ardentesque notate oculos : qui spiritus illi, Qui vultus, vocisve sonus, vel gressns eunti. " Matrons, this is not Beroe who stands before you, not the wife of Doryclus. Mark here the characters of divine beauty ! See how bright her eyes ! What fragrance in her breath ! What majesty in her looks ! Or mark the music of her voice, and the graceful mien with which she moves !" It denotes Life where JEneas is heard protesting fidelity to the too-coufiding, ill-requited Dido : Nee me meminisse pigebit Elisse Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus ! "Never shall I be slow to think of Dido, while I retain any recollection of myself, or life to actuate these limbs !" 144. In connection with the word spirit, it is interesting to note the cognate term " spiral," seeing that it involves the same idea. Similarly derived from spiro to blow, its flmdamental allusion is to the well-known phenomenon of the spiral movement of the wind. Now this peculiar move- ment, the spiral, delineates a Form, which form thus be- comes an emblem or pictorial representative of the wind, and thence of what the wind itself represents, namely, Life. All forms are representative, and their significance is the science of sciences. There are lower, highei', and highest forms. Forms made up of straight lines, and thus angular, with flat surfaces, as crystals, are of the lowest degree, and accord with what is inorganic, inanimate, and basal gene- 20 « 234 THE SPIRAL FORM. rally. Next comes the form of which the sphere and the circle are the type— a form derived from the extension of the primitive point in all directions, and which is essentially connected with the organic and animate. Whatever in the universe exhibits a totality, is always a solid circle or sphere. Portions of circles, or curves, conjoined with the straight line and angle, give that innumerable variety of profiles and configurations which we see among animals and plants. Rarely is the curve found in the inorganic department of creation. Only perhaps in the S]3herules of quicksilver, on the convex side of drops of water and other liquids, in bub- bles, and in some few minerals. In the degree that crystals multiply their surfaces, and thus lose their great angles and facets, they approach the spherical or organic form. The dodecahedron, for example, approaches the sphere more noarly than the octohedron ; the octohedron more nearly than the cube. Highest of all is the Spiral form, which in its own highest kind, or as produced by winding a thread round a cylinder, is the circle infinitely continued. The circle returns into itself, ending where it began ; but the possible beginning and ending of a spiral the imagination cannot conceive. The sj)iral, therefore, rather than the circle, is the true symbol of eternity. The spiral form is identified with no department of creation in particular, because an emblem of the omnipresent principle which equally sustains all. It shows itself most remarkably in the Vegetable kingdom, where it is the law of the arrange- ment of the leaves, and thus of the buds and flowers. Almost all the wonderful diversities in the contour of j)lants come of their spirals of development being more or less stretched or contracted. Thus, alternate leaves become opposite by a slight contraction ; opposite ones become ver- ticillate by a greater. Flowers universally are produced by the contraction of the spiral into a series of concentric ANIMA AND ANIMUS. 235 rings, the highest part of the spix'al becoming the centre, and its lowest part the circumference. Certain fruits, as fir- cones, show the spiral in the most beautiful manner. In- ternally, plants abound Avith a delicate kind of veins known as " spiral vessels." Stems, again, which are too slender to stand upright, lift themselves into the air by twining spirally round a stronger neighbor. As respects the animal king- dom, the spiral is a frequent and beautiful feature in uni- valve shells ; where also, as in plants, much of the wonderful variety comes of the spiral being more or less contracted. In the lovely genera Cerithium, Pleurostoma, Fusus, Tur- ritella, &c., one extreme is shown ; in Cyprsea, Conus, Strombus, &c., the other. The beautiful spiral by which the Vorticellse extend and retract themselves gives to the movements of these little creatures an elegance and spright- liness unsurpassed. In human organization the spiral is less observable, except that it adorns the head with curls and ringlets. Human life, on the other hand, is one un- broken, endless spiral, and here we realize the greatness and amplitude of the significance of the spiral Form. Life winds its little circles, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, faithfully concluding each before another is begun, but never failing to commence afresh where it left ofi*, and so goes on evei'lastingly, ring rising upon ring, every circle covering and reiterating its predecessors, on a higher level, nearer and nearer to the heavens. The material body drops away, like dead leaves, but Life goes on, in beautiful and ceaseless aspii'ation. Nowhere in nature is there a more charming emblem of Life than the common scarlet or twining bean of our gardens, while rising to its maturity. 145. Animus, the usual Latin Avord for the soul, short- ened in French into dme, is the same word as anima, the wind, in Greek dusjuoi;, whence the pretty name anemone, or wind-flower The subordinate senses are preserved, like 236 PSYCHE. those of qnritus, in the Latin authors. Thus, " aurarumque leves animce," " the light breezes of the winds ;" (Lucretius V. 237.) "Ah miseram Eurydicen, animd fugiente, vocabat," "Ah, unfortunate Eurydice, he cries Avith his fast-fleeting breath." (Georgic iv. 526.) The earlier etymological his- tory is found in the Sanscrit language, in which breath is called anas and cinilas, the root being an. Though essen- tially the same word, a useful practical distinction is made in Latin between the two forms anima and animits; the for- mer being restricted, in its figurative ascent, to the organic life, whence it is usually translated " life," " vital principle," or " animal soul ;" while to the latter is allowed the higher meaning of spiritual life, whence it is generally translated " rational soul :" — Mnndi Principio indulsit communis conditor illis Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, &c. Juvenal, Sat. xv. 147. " In the beginning of the world, the Creator vouchsafed to brutes only the principle of vitality ; to us lie gave souls also, that an in- stinct of affection, reciprocally felt, might urge us to seek, and to give, assistance." 146. Wu-^Yj, the Greek word generally understood to mean " soul," comes from (poj^M to blow, and would seem to be of kindred onomatopoetic origin with spiritus. Katpol dvaipu^sco;:, " the times of refreshing," (Acts iii. 19) is lite- rally " the times of the blowing of the cool wind." There is a good deal of misconception as to this famous word. What it ordinarily intends in Greek literature, both sacred and secular, is not the spiritual, immortal part of man, but his animal or time-life. " Take no thought for your life" — ■ fih iJ.epcftvd.re zyjci ifioy^iov bpcov, with the context, well illus- trates its ordinary New Testament significance. In Kev. xvi. 3, fishes are called (puiaz. Conformably with these PNEIIMA. 237 usages, " the natural body," i. e., the material body, endowed with organic, animal life only, and belonging exclusively to the temporal world, is termed by St. Paul, mofia itjo-^abv, while the spiritual, immortal body he calls acofxa 7TU£0fj.aT!- xou. Undoubtedly, "soul" in its high, metaphysical and theological senses, is occasionally intended by (po-^rj; but its most useful signification is simply the life which animates the temporary, material body. Many of the ancients attri- buted to the latter all that is psychological as well as physi- ological in our nature. With these, accordingly, (pu')(^f] in- cludes both "life" and "mind," or anima and animus, and is their collective appellation.* 147. What is generally intended in to-day's English by " soul," i. e., the immortal, thinking part of man, is in Greek mostly called Tivsu/jLa. Translators render it " spirit." The primary or physical sense is illustrated by St. John — " the vnnd hloweth where it listeth;" and the secondary or physi- ological one by St. Matthew — " Jesus yielded up the ghost," (xxvii. 50,) Tiveufw. being the Greek word in both cases. When in the New Testament (j-'O-/^-/] and Tcveufxa occur in juxtaposition, the sense is tantamount to the colloquial phrase " life and soul." But they are translated soul and spirit," as in Heb. iv. 12, fostering the popular mistake that the soul (theologically so called) and the spirit are distinct things. Nothing can exceed the confusion into which even intelligent people are often unconsciously drawn, through the want of a clear understanding of the great truth, so sub- lime in its simplicity, " that there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," — not there will he, but there is, and that this spiritual body is the ever-living soul or spirit. If any doubt the existence of such confusion, let them read ■* On Homer's use of the word, see a learned paper from the Ger- man of Voelcker, in the Classical Museum for 1845. 238 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY. Wesley's 41st hymn — "And am I born to die ?" and see if they can shut the book with the least glimmering of com- prehension of what it means. " Spirit, soul, and body," as in 1 Thess. v. 2'3, is a Scriptural perij)hrase for the whole man, as he exists during his time-life; "spirit" denoting the life of the intellect and affections, or of the internal man ; "soul" the life of the body, as exercised in the appetites and animal instincts ; " body" the sacred instrument with which those lives are enabled to be played forth into the world. Soul and body, or (puyji and acopta, have reference to this world only ; spirit, or Tivzufjia, belongs also to the world to come. Consentaneously with this, man is Scripturally called " flesh" when his mortality is the subject of discourse ; "soul" when his animal propensities are chiefly alluded to ; " spirit" when his intellectual or emotional nature or the in- ternal man, is the theme. The ghosts, or disengaged spirit- ual bodies of the dead, are called Tiveofioxa, or " spirits," by the inspired writers, on a principle already set forth. 148. The Hebrew words corresponding with soul, &c., of- fer precisely similar histories, nil (ruahh) denotes the wind in Gen. viii. 1 ; breath, frequently ; temporal life, in the his- tory of Samson — -" when he had drank, his spirit came again ;" spiritual life, and life in the general sense, or the all-sustaining energy of the Creator, also very often. lysj (nephesJi) and riDtyj {neshcmiah) are equivalents in every way. A minute exposition of the application of these words, constitutes, along with relevant matter, an invalu- able little book by the Kev. George Bush, Professor of He- brew at New York — " Soul, or an Inquiry into Scriptural Psychology." New York, 1845. 149. Comparing these various facts, the conclusion we come to is, that Avhile on the one hand, tlie soul is no mere appendage to human nature, shapeless and incomprehensi- ble, or at best, "life;" on the other hand, that wondrous THE BODY THE APPENDAGE TO THE SOUL. 289 spiritual body in which we find it, is the veritable, essential Man — ipse — " the man in the man." Rightly regarded, it is not the soul that is the appendage, but the body. As a mate- rial body, it is admirable and incomparable ; but placed be- side that which alone gives dignity and glory to the idea of man, it confesses itself no more than a piece of mechanism, spread over him for awhile, in order that during his reten- tion of it, he may act on the material world and its inhabit- ants, and fashion his intellect and moral character. It is the strong right arm with which he is impowered to enforce his arbitrations. Man is created for heaven, not for earth ; therefore he is mndamentally a spiritual, and only provi- sionally a material being. The ecoo^ of his nature is the spiritual body; the material is only its ecdcoXov.'^^ The Bcd(oXov is first to mortal eyes and understanding ; but the spiritual elooi; is the first to fact and truth ; just as the ut- tered word is the first to the listener, but the invisible, underlying thought the first to the speaker. Truly and beautifully has man been called a "word" of the Creator. The spiritual body is the seat of all thought, all emotion, all volition ; excepting, of course, such purely animal voli- tion as belongs to the organic life, and is participated in by the brutes. The material body does no more than fulfill the instincts of its own proper organic or brute life, save when the spiritual body gives forth a mandate. Intimately com- bined with its envelope till the latter wears out, or falls sick, and dies, the sjoiritual body then renounces all connec- tion with it ; throws it back into its native dust, as * The difference between il'iJoj and diwXov is not generally discri- minated by the lexicons as it deserves ; — sWoj denotes the true, es- sential form of a thing ; zUo>\ov, on the contrary, the apparent, painted, or external : sUw\ov is the diminutive of diog not in reference to extent or bulk, but in respect of perfection and essence. 240 SLEEP OF THE S(J"UL. the snake casts his enamell'd skin : or as The grasshoppers of the summer lay down their worn-out dresses,* and becomes conscious of the Better Land. Its own life goes on as before. At least there is not the slightest reason to suppose, either on Scriptural or philosophical grounds, that its vital activity is for one instant suspended. The notion that the soul falls into a kind of sleep or lethargy, on the death of the body, though a very common one, is indeed utterly at variance both with the deductions of philosophy and the intimations of Holy Writ, which plainly informs us that the spirit rises immediately after death, as in the para- ble of Lazarus and the rich man, and in the address of our Saviour to the crucified thief, " This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" a prophecy, moreover, impossible on any other understanding than that of a spiritual body. Just what the soul is, when it shakes off the material envelope, it continues to he, retaining all its loves, desires, and inclina- tions, be they good or evil, pure or impure; and uiDon these it goes on expending its life, the only difference being in the immediate results to the individual, seeing that the sphere wherein those loves, &c. are now played forth, is absolutely spiritual, and governed by laws and conditions of its own. Of the origin of the notion of the soul's sinking into a state of torpor after death, there can be no doubt. Like most other falsities in psychology, and like many in theology, it comes of false physiology, and is directly traceable to the materialist's figment that life is a function of organization, the corollary of which is, that as there is no visible organi- * ut olim Cum veteres ponunt tunicas sBstate cicadse. LxJCRETius, Lib. iv. 55-56. MAN A DENIZEN OF TWO WORLDS. 241 zation but that of matter, therefore matter is essential to man's existence ; and thus, that when denuded of it at death, his soul collapses into an insensate, motionless, incompetent nothing, so to remain till reclothed with flesh and blood. But this, as we have seen, is altogether fallacious. Man is a thinking, feeling, immortal creature, not by virtue of his material body, but by virtue of his spiritual body. From the first moment of his existence, he is an inhabitant both of the material and of the spiritual world. He dwells con- sciously in the one, unconsciously in the other; and the change induced on him by "death" is simi^ly that this state of matters is reversed. That is, he then dwells consciously in the spiritual world, but is no longer a percipient of the material one. Why, during his first state, he sees and knows nothing, consciously, of the spiritual world, is that he is blindfolded by the "muddy vesture of decay." Why he is afterwards unconscious of the material world, is that in order to realize it, he must possess an appropriate material organism. We live in the spiritual world, all of xis, as per- sons blind from birth live in the pi'esent material one, i. e., in it, but not seeing it; and the death of the material body (Avhich involves the permanent opening of the spiritual sight) is like the couching of the eyes of such persons by an oculist, and enabling them to see what surrounds them. In our chapter on the Future State, this will receive its due meed of illustration. 150. That there are many and great difiiculties in con- ceiving of the mystery of the spiritual body, that is, of the Soul, has already been amply conceded. He who would afiect to deny them would only betray his ignorance both of himself and his subject. Embedded as we are in the material, the mind needs first to assume the doctrine, and then gradually ascend to the verification. FolloAving a clue, and knowing what we are looking for, the evidence is found. 21 L 242 DIFFICULTIES IN REGARD TO THE SOUL. We act no differently, day by day, when we enter on the study of any new and comprehensive subject in physical or physiological science. Not that this is a new doctrine, but only an unfamiliar one. "It is a venerable creed, like a dawn on the peaks of thought, reddening their snows from the light of another sun, the substance of immemorial reli- gions, the comfort of brave simplicity, though the doubt of to-day, and the abyss of terrified science." It is hard, for instance, to think at first of spiritual form, because all our ordinary experience of form presses upon us the idea of ma- terial solidity. It is hard, likewise, to think how the spiritual body is circumstanced with regard to what in the material world are called Time and Space. Accustomed as we are to regard space and the spiritual as antithetical, we are at first quite indisposed to admit that a spiritual being can be bounded by space. It is true, nevertheless. Nothing but Deity can be everywhere at once. There must be portions even of the spiritual world where a given spirit is not. Therefore the spiritual body is subject to a condition at all events cmsivering to sj^ace. Again, it is hard, nay, it is im- possible, to conceive of what may be called the procreation and birth of the spiritual body, and in what mode and respect these are concurrent with the procreation and birth of the material body. We can satisfy ourselves of nothing more than that God creates the soul when needed, and not before.* The organization of the spiritual body is equally * For opinions on the subject, see Dickinson's Physica Vetus et Vera, cap. 11 ; Blakey's History of the Philosophy of the Mind, vol. 1, p. 197 ; and Clowes' Fourth Letter on the Human Soul. The famous doctrine of the "pre-existence" of the soul, it is beside our present purpose to discuss. See, for an enthusiastic defence of it, " Liox Orientalis, or an Enquiry into the opinions of the Eastern Sages, concerning the pre-existence of the Soul." 12mo., 1662. DIFFICULTIES ARE NO OBJECTION, 243 beyond the range of man's present powers. There can be little doubt, however, that instead of a simple homogeneity, as commonly supposed, the soul is eminently composite. " There are some things in Paul's description of the spiritual body," says Dr. Hitchcock, "which make it quite probable that its organization will be" (or rather is) "much more exquisite than anything in existence on earth. He repre- sents the spiritual body as far transcending the material body both in glory and power; and since the latter is 'fear- fully and wonderfully made,' nothing but the most exquisite organization can give the spiritual body such a superiority over the natural." (Religion of Geology, Lect. xiv.) Then there is the nature of the sex of the spiritual body, which is as immortal as itself, albeit that in heaven "there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage." Sex, in its true idea, belongs to the soul, not to the body, in which it is only representatively and temporally present. This fine subject the reader may see treated with admirable delicacy and philosophy in Haughton's " Sex in the Future State." 151. Because of such difficulties, and because too intensely accustomed to the material to welcome such propositions as have been set forth, some will not improbably receive them wath a laugh, and tax us at least with superstition.* Good. If superstition it be to hold such views, it is a superstition far more valuable and fertilizing to the mind than all that some men esteem the truth. Putting faith before charity in all they do, and deceiving themselves by substituting nar- * It is scarcely necessary to repeat that the vulgar notion respect- ing ghosts, including "haunted houses," "spirit-rapping," white sheets, &c., &c., is altogether apart from the doctrine of the spiritual body. The latter is Scriptural and philosophical, whereas the for- mer is neither, but utterly contemptible, and does not even call for the disclaimer which would asknowledge it to deserve one. 244 FACTS AND HYPOTHESES. row and exclusive notions for a comprehensive and benign belief, many men's "truth" is nothing but traditional, barren error. We ask no one to accept uninquiringly, and should be sorry for any one who did. "What a man takes upon trust," remarks Locke, "is but shreds, which however well they may look in the whole piece, make no considerable ad- dition to his stock who gathers them. So much only as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much only do we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. Like fairy money, they turn to dust when they come to be used." On the other hand, let no one too hastily reject. Disbelieve after inquiry, if you see cause to ; but never begin with disbelief Premature condemnation is the fool's func- tion. It goes for nothing to say that the evidence of the truth of a proposition does not aj)pear. Do you see the evidence of its falsity^ Before you reject a proposition or series of propositions, for what you suppose to be their error, take care that you apprehend all their truth; or as Carlyle shrewdly advises, "Be sure that you see, before you assume to over&ee," Indeed, till the truth of a theme be appre- ciated, its error, if any, cannot be detected. Such doctrines as this of the spiritual body it is impossible to grasp on the instant. They must be thought out, from the data which Scripture supplies, and philosophy illustrates. Hypothetical though they may be, in certain points, this again is no valid objection, since without hypothesis it is impossible to advance a single step. " Philosophy proceeds upon a system of credit; and if she never advanced beyond her tangible capital, her wealth would not be so enormous as it is."* Difficulty in finding interpretation of anomalies and perplexities "is no * Rev. W. Thomson, "Outlines of the Laws of Tlionajht " OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS, &C. 245 argument," as Baden Powell truly observes, "against the general truth of a proposition ; nor need it lead us into ex- travagant and gratuitous speculations to bring about a pre- cise explanation where the circumstances do not furnish sufficient data. Having once grasped firmly a great princi- ple, Ave should be satisfied to leave minor difficulties to wait their solution, assured that time will clear them up, as it has done before with others." The fact is, all great and sacred truths, and there are none grander and more sacred than this of the spiritual body, come to us at first, "like the gods in Homer, enveloped in blinding mist." But to him whom their descent to earth concerns, — to him who stands most in need of their help, and who can most gratefully ap- preciate, and best apply the privilege, "the cloud becomes luminous and fragrant, and discloses the divinity within." The eye that in the beginning was so dim, presently feels itself sparkle and dilate, and what the intellect fails to read, the quick heart interprets. As when the moon hath comforted the night. And set the world in silver of her light. 152. It may be interesting to conclude the argument that the soul is a spiritual body with a few citations of authors by whom the doctrine has been treated or approved. Among the Fathers there does not appear to have been one who re- garded the soul as most modern authors do. They seem rather to have been unanimous as to its corporeity, though on the nature of this corporeity they widely differed. Ter- ll^ tullian argues not only that the soul is a body, and that it holds the human form, but that God himself is a body, for that what is bodiless is nothing.* Augustin, though he finds * De. Anima, near the beginning, Opera, p. 307; and Adve^sus Praxeam, ib. p. 637. (Ed. Paris, 1641.) 21® 246 OPINIONS OP THE FATHERS, &C. fault with Tei'tullian, from the mistaken notion that his views involve materialism, by no means rejects them.* Theodotus is very explicit; d?da xac 'rj