acted upon by the immateriality of life. To this must be added the power of sensation by which certain material substances may be selected.

The distinguishing difference between vegetable and animal bodies, both which are alike constructed according to some organic arrangement, supported by air and food, are endowed with the spirit of life, and consequently subject to be decomposed in their material parts when that spirit is withdrawn, is most chiefly to be recognised in these two particulars; first, the elementary material unions are higher, and secondly, to accomplish this it is indispensable that the unions of three material parts should first take place in vegetable bodies to furnish the bases of animal structures, these latter not being able to subsist upon binary compounds. Whether these latter phenomena are the result of the operation of a different kind of spirit to that which animates the brutes, or whether they are not considered to be of a sufficiently diagnostic character, I am not able to determine.

In animal life, ideas and thoughts, the result of mixed sensations, or more varied displays of the abstract power of sensation, are superadded by means of a cerebral apparatus to simple sensation which alone takes place in vegetable life. In connexion with this additional organic part, I shall proceed to of the operations of the spirit of life.

consider some Before, how

ever, I do this, it will be right to take a view of the three spirits I have been pointing out in their more conjunctive operations.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COMBINED ACTION OF THE TWO SPIRITS OF HEAT AND OF ELECTRICITY IN THE PHENOMENA OF INORGANIC BODIES; AND OF THE THREE SPIRITS OF HEAT, ELECTRICITY, AND LIFE, IN THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC BODIES; REVIEWED, AND THEIR SEPARATE IDENTITIES SHOWN.

THE arguments authorizing a belief that material and immaterial substances have a separate and a real existence having been adduced, and some of the qualities and phenomena resulting from the two different ways in which these two great entities are found to unite in the formation and the carrying on of the created universe having been pointed out, I shall now go on to notice some of the more complex operations of the two spirits of heat and of electricity as they blend their powers in the production of the higher forces and more intricate movements of the inorganic world. These movements and operations, when joined by the spirit of life, partake of the highest and most obscure complications, as they are displayed in the structure of living bodies. Afterwards I shall consider the several more decided proofs of the separate existence or individuality of these three spirits.

The Union of the Spirits in the production of the higher phenomena of Natural Bodies.

The distinction between the qualities stamped upon created bodies at their original creation by the aid of these spirits, of heat and electricity, and the phenomena they are observed to cause in the movement and displacement that is constantly going on in the natural operations of the universe, may, however, be made clearer by tracing the connexion those qualities and phenomena bear to each other as the effect of the combined action of the two spirits with matter under particular circumstances. We will take for example the quality of globularity, and view it in connexion with the phenomena of motion.

Even the permanent qualities of natural bodies I have endeavoured to show could not have been given to created substances, as they are found united in nature, without the concurrence of these spirits with uncombined material substance. The form, therefore, of natural bodies must have been regulated by these spirits. And we shall presently see all the moving or active phenomena of the universe are remarkable for being associated with one particular form, which they invariably assume.

The division of all natural bodies into liquid and solid is that which we now observe to mark the two very different states in which these bodies are found. But there is the greatest evidence, by the investigation of the various structures of solid bodies, to lead us to

conclude that in the original process of formation all the primary material substances were in a liquid or gaseous state. In such a state, if we judge from the characteristic form of all liquid bodies, as well as the solid structures of all those bodies endued with the spirit of life, we shall have little doubt that the original form of every created substance was globular. But as many of those substances would not be required to enter into the moving phenomena of creation, and would, moreover, be made use of to form the solid basis of our planet, it was necessary to bring the particles or molecules so closely together, as that, by intimate contact, they might form solid matter. This was accomplished by removing the atmospheres, as the spirits of heat and electricity that surround the gaseous particles of all bodies are called, and so depriving those particles at once both of the power of being globular and of retaining the fluid character.

Being thus fixed in their different mineral relations, we notice the most remarkable external characteristic of these solid masses of inorganic matter is their external form. Where any regularity of form is to be observed in them, as in crystallization, the form is confined to flat surfaces and right angles, varying their inclination according to fixed laws that govern them.

All those substances which are not so fixed and solidified, but that are required to sustain certain operations connected with the motion, whether of the celestial orbs that revolve in the universe, or of bodies upon the surface of our globe to which has been attached

the spirit of life, have also a form which remarkably distinguishes them. This is more or less round or oval. Such a shape has many advantages attached to it to render it indispensable. The two spirits of heat and electricity could thus surround it; and as in the case of the grander and more stupendous celestial bodies, so in that of the most minute and invisible molecules that float in the atmosphere, these spirits are brought to bear upon such bodies in the production of the natural movements and forces peculiar to each. The globular form, then, of natural bodies, thought, from its universal prevalence in organic structures and substances, to be characteristic of these alone, is a quality imparted to all matter, the atoms of which, for the most obvious purposes, are required to be in a liquid or a gaseous state,-in other words, whose molecules are so far separated from each other by the spirit of heat, as to admit of the action of the spirit of electricity upon the surface of every individual molecule, whether at our temperature or at one higher. The minerals mercury, pitch, and naphtha, are in their atoms globular, because, like water, they are liquid; and we observe the same form in those mineral bodies found in the igneous rocks, which were doubtless at some former period in a liquid state, called, from their resemblance to small almonds, amygdaloidal; and in oolitic limestone, which was doubtless originally in a fluid state, the particles observe the same shape. The same form is assumed by the heavenly bodies around us, as well as by our earth, which was at the creation, in all