Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/239

Rh Inorganisms,—1st, all substances which, though infinitely divisible, being but mechanically so, are incapable of being developed into various parts and of maintaining at the same time their individual existence; and therefore all elementary bodies, such for instance as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, the metals, sulphur, &c. 2nd, All substances whose resolution or development into their elements annihilates their individual existence; as, for instance, water, which, as soon as it is decomposed by the influence of galvanism into oxygen and hydrogen gas, ceases to be water,—widely differing in this respect from the plant, which, when it develops itself into leaves, branches, flowers, and fruit, remains still the same plant, or rather becomes then for the first time completely a plant. To these we must add the acids, salts, &c., nay, the constituent parts of organic bodies themselves, which being resolved into their elements are, as organic bodies, utterly destroyed. 3rd, All bodies which owe not their existence and multiplicity to spontaneous development, but are composed by nature or by art out of materials already prepared; for instance, floating islands, buildings formed by animals, all automata, machines, &c.

But as we find in real organisms single subordinate parts or organs, which in a certain degree reproduce the idea of the whole; nay, as we see that in less perfect organisms that bond of unity which holds the developed parts together is yet so feeble that if it is separated the part appears to be really a whole, (for instance, the shoot of a plant separated from its parent often becomes a new plant, and the parts of a polypus become new polypi,) so do we not unfrequently observe the idea of the living thing to which they belong reproduced to a certain extent by natural bodies which, so far as they are parts of a greater organism, have not the appearance of being organisms themselves. Of this fact we have an instance in the formation of a water-drop, which, as manifesting a certain force of gravity or tendency to internal unity, is essentially analogous to the spherical formation of the heavenly bodies; and in crystallization, the growth of metals, &c. we see a repetition of the process by which the earth was formed out of fluids. If we turn our attention to these intimations of individual life in unorganized bodies, the idea of the living principle pervading all nature presents itself anew and more distinctly to our minds, and we are forced to admit the relations of the unorganized to organized bodies, which could exist only in this connexion and under their other relations to universal nature. From all this we are finally led to infer the universal connexion, the combination, the never-ceasing action and reaction of all the powers of nature, sometimes in sympathy, sometimes in antipathy, as necessary to the production of an immeasurably vast and magnificent whole,—an action and reaction which would be impossible, were not all originally pervaded by one living principle, were not all in this respect similar and allied to each other.