xcept in the same sense that the
action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In
using such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated the
possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of
man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing
influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and
universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a
foundation, but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, _in its
nature_, incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of an
exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a sufficiently
powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence on the earth of
cultivated plants and domestic animals, the presence of some intelligent
being of a higher nature than themselves.

_NOTE B._ (_Page_ 365.)

A friend has suggested that I have not here explained myself
sufficiently, and objects, that _life_ does not exist in matter any more
than _consciousness_, and if the one can be produced by the laws of
matter, why may not the other? I reply, that there is a radical
difference between the two. Organic or vegetative life consists
essentially in chemical transformations and molecular motions, occurring
under certain conditions and in a certain order. The matter, and the
forces which act upon it, are for the most part known; and if there are
any forces engaged in the manifestation of vegetative life yet
undiscovered (which is a moot question), we can conceive them as
analogous to such forces as heat, electricity, or chemical affinity,
with which we are already acquainted. We can thus clearly _conceive_ of
the transition from dead matter to living matter. A complex mass which
suffers decomposition or decay is dead, but if this mass has the power
of attracting to itself, from the surrounding medium, matter like that
of which it is composed, we have the first rudiment of vegetative life.
If the mass can do this for a considerable time, and if its absorption
of new matter more than replaces that lost by decomposition, and if it
is of such a nature as to resist the mechanical or chemical forces to
which it is usually exposed, and to retain a tolerably constant form, we
term it a living organism. We can _conceive_ an organism to be so
constituted, and we can further conceive that any fragments, which may
be accidentally broken from it, or which may fall away when its bulk has
become too gr