Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/237

Rh phænomena, conceived therefore not as permanent but as perpetually changing; and this idea of it is conveyed in the term formation, inasmuch as it signifies a thing not only formed but forming itself. We know, for example, that the human body after a series of years is a very different thing from what it was at an earlier period; nay, that the body of the adult does not contain even a single atom of that which constituted the fœtus; and nevertheless, that the internal, the living principle, the man, as every one's consciousness undeniably assures him, is still the same, nothing being changed but the phænomena of life, among which, as we have already shown, the body is to be included.

As it follows from the foregoing observations that life is not a single isolated reality, we shall be obliged to define it generally as the constant manifestation of an ideal unity through a real multiplicity, that is, the manifestation of an internal principle or law through outward forms. This view of the subject will indeed derive additional light from the analogous character of that inward principle which we call soul, inasmuch as this also consists not in this or that particular thought, or in the mere succession of our thoughts, or anything else of the sort, but in the whole spiritual life in general, that is, in the constant revelation and manifestation of an internal unity—of the deepest consciousness of the individual identity through an infinite variety of sensations and ideas.

If we now cast a look on that universal nature which surrounds us, the endless multiplicity of its phænomena is indisputably manifest; and as it would be an absurdity to imagine a highest number to which another number cannot be added, we can fix the limits of nature nowhere, either in the great or in the small, because the infinite divisibility of each would lead again to infinity. These infinities are nevertheless included in the comprehensiveness of the whole; there is but one whole, (the word has no plural form in our language,) and the idea of this necessarily contains at the same time the internal multiplicity, or rather infinity; for it would be a manifest inconsistency to conceive of a real whole as a unity, while in its strict reality it implies rather the idea of an infinity of individuals. Thus we find in fact the idea of life, that is, the constant manifestation of unity through multiplicity, exhibited by universal nature; and are therefore bound to consider nature collectively as one vast and infinite life, in which, though the extinction of any one of its various modifications, or the merging of a single external form of life in the universal life, is possible, an absolute and proper death is inconceivable.

Proceeding from this general view to the consideration of single beings, we perceive that all those individuals, so far as they are integrant parts of universal nature, must partake more or less of its essential properties,—that whatever is essential to the one must be partially repeated in the other. Every natural being must therefore appear, like nature in general, partly as a unity (in which light only it is an individual), and partly as a multiplicity, in which light it is infinitely