be a bolder man than we
are, who will undertake to say _what it is_; but we can very safely
declare _what it is not_; and in any particular form or aggregation of
matter, whether organic or inorganic, we can give a shrewd guess as to
its presence or absence. It may be said, that we beg the question by
assuming that organization is not life; it may be so; but it is quite
too much to allow the materialist quietly to take the opposite doctrine
for granted. He must know the full extent of his task,--that it is
necessary for him not only to construct the machine, but actually to set
it in motion, so that it shall afterwards run on of its own accord. It
is very easy to frame a partial definition of life, by merely describing
one or two of its characteristic functions; and then, because some
action can be detected between the particles of brute matter, which
resembles the exercise of these functions, boldly to declare that the
whole mystery is solved. Thus it is said, that life is nothing but the
accretion of similar substances, or the addition of like unto like; and
as this occurs in crystallization, which is confessedly a phenomenon of
inorganic matter, therefore there is no fundamental difference between
the properties of living and dead substances. We deny the first
proposition; nutrition is not the only characteristic of life, and the
nutritive process, whether in vegetables or animals, is not mere
accretion, but assimilation. It has been said, though the assertion is
by no means fully proved, that assimilation is only a finer kind of
chemistry, the constituent principles being brought together only by
their natural affinities. Even if this were true, if the stomach and the
digestive apparatus were only a well furnished chemical laboratory, fit
for conducting the most delicate experiments, the great difficulty would
still remain. The question might yet be asked, Where is the chemist? And
this is the fundamental question, which the materialists never attempt
to answer, but quietly evade.

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body has been
explained by Coleridge clearly enough for our purpose. In the former,--a
sheaf of corn, for instance,--the whole is nothing more than a
collection of the individual parts; in the latter,--an animal,--the
whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts. In the latter case,
the whole is every thing, and the parts are comparatively nothing. One
of the great effects of life i