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164 which the light of knowledge has not yet been able to penetrate.

227. We have thus learned two things, for, in the first place, we have learned that life is associated with delicacy of construction, and in the next (Art. 220), that delicacy of construction implies an unstable arrangement of natural forces. We have now to remark that the particular force which is thus used by living beings is chemical affinity. Our bodies are, in truth, examples of an unstable arrangement of chemical forces, and the materials which composed them, if not liable to sudden explosion, like fulminating powder, are yet pre-eminently the subjects of decay.

228. Now, this is more than a mere general statement; it is a truth that admits of degrees, and in virtue of which those parts of our bodies which have, during life, the noblest and most delicate office to perform, are the very first to perish when life is extinct.

So speaks the poet, and we have here an aspect of things in which the lament of the poet becomes the true interpretation of nature.