omena to the actions, reactions, and interchanges of a few
elementary substances, or at least excited the expectation that this would
speedily be effected, the hope shot up, almost instantly, into full faith,
that it had been effected. Henceforward the new path, thus brilliantly
opened, became the common road to all departments of knowledge: and, to
this moment, it has been pursued with an eagerness and almost epidemic
enthusiasm which, scarcely less than its political revolutions,
characterise the spirit of the age. Many and inauspicious have been the
invasions and inroads of this new conqueror into the rightful territories
of other sciences; and strange alterations have been made in less harmless
points than those of terminology, in homage to an art unsettled, in the
very ferment of imperfect discoveries, and either without a theory, or
with a theory maintained only by composition and compromise. Yet this very
circumstance has favoured its encroachments, by the gratifications which
its novelty affords to our curiosity, and by the keener interest and
higher excitement which an unsettled and revolutionary state is sure to
inspire. He who supposes that science possesses an immunity from such
influences knows little of human nature. How, otherwise, could men of
strong minds and sound judgments have attempted to penetrate by the clue
of chemical experiment the secret recesses, the sacred adyta of organic
life, without being aware that chemistry must needs be at its extreme
limits, when it has approached the threshold of a higher power? Its own
transgressions, however, and the failure of its enterprises will become
the means of defining its absolute boundary, and we shall have to guard
against the opposite error of rejecting its aid altogether as analogy,
because we have repelled its ambitious claims to an identity with the
vital powers.

* * * * *

Previously to the submitting my own ideas on the subject of life, and the
powers into which it resolves itself, or rather in which it is manifested
to us, I have hazarded this apparent digression from the anxiety to
_preclude certain suspicions_, which the subject itself is so fitted to
awaken, and while I anticipate the charges, to plead in answer to each a
full and unequivocal--not guilty!

In the first place, therefore, I distinctly disclaim all intention of
explaining life into an occult quality; and retort the charge on those who
can satisf