Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/163

Rh bodily organs are kept in motion by some power of their own? This would be to ascribe to matter (for both the heart and lungs are material) a prerogative which never did, and never can, belong to it. Or shall we suppose that nature, by virtue of some of her latent and mysterious qualities, infuses into the above organs their respective faculties of continual pulsation and respiration? This, again, would be assigning to nature an agency utterly inconsistent with every just idea which can be formed either of herself or her operations. For what shall we say is nature, but something in herself dead, and created only for the purpose of receiving life? And how can death produce motion, and render this motion also permanent for ages? We are constrained then, on this occasion, to call in the aid of a power paramount both to matter and nature, before we can explain, either rationally or satisfactorily, the origin and continuance of those living motions which are constantly at work in the deep centre of our own bosoms. And what can this power be but the power of mind; that is to say, of will and understanding? And whence is the power of will and understanding, but from that manifested, Who hath declared to all his intelligent creatures, “Without  (or apart from me) ye can do nothing?” [John xv. 5.]