e
space, with an heterogeneous inmate, the cycle of whose actions revolves
within itself. Besides which I should think that I was confounding
metaphors and realities most absurdly, if I imagined that I had a greater
insight into the meaning and possibility of a living alcohol, than of a
living quicksilver. In short, visible _surface_ and _power_ of any kind,
much more the _power_ of life, are ideas which the very forms of the human
understanding make it impossible to identify. But whether the powers which
manifest themselves to us under certain conditions in the forms of
electricity, or chemical attraction, have any analogy to the power which
manifests itself in growth and organization, is altogether a different
question, and demands altogether a different chain of reasoning: if it be
indeed a tree of knowledge, it will be known by its fruits, and these will
depends not on the mere assertion, but on the inductions by which the
position is supported, and by the additions which it makes to our insight
into the nature of the facts it is meant to illustrate.

To _account_ for Life is one thing; to explain Life another. In the first
we are supposed to state something prior (if not in time, yet in the order
of Nature) to the thing accounted for, as the ground or cause of that
thing, or (which comprises the meaning and force of both words) as its
_sufficient cause, quae et facit, et subest_. And to this, in the question
of Life, I know no possible answer, but GOD. To account for a thing is to
see into the principle of its possibility, and from that principle to
evolve its being. Thus the mathematician demonstrates the truths of
geometry by constructing them. It is an admirable remark of Joh. Bapt. a
Vico, in a Tract published at Naples, 1710,(6) "Geometrica ideo
demonstramus, quia facimus; physica si demonstrare possimus, faceremus.
Metaphysici veri claritas eadem ac lucis, quam non nisi per opaca
cognoscimus; nam non lucem sed lucidas res videmus. Physica sunt opaca,
nempe formata et finita, in quibus Metaphysici veri lumen videmus." The
reasoner who assigns structure or organization as the antecedent of Life,
who names the former a cause, and the _latter_ its effect, _he_ it is who
pretends to account for life. Now Euclid would, with great right, demand
of such a philosopher to _make_ Life; in the same sense, I mean, in which
Euclid makes an Icosahedron, or a figure of twenty sides, namely, in the
understanding or by an intel