view not only precludes a groundless assumption, it
likewise fills up the arbitrary chasm between physics and physiology, and
justifies us in using the former as means of insight into the latter,
which would be contrary to all sound rules of ratiocination if the powers
working in the objects of the two sciences were absolutely and essentially
diverse. For as to abstract the idea of _kind_ from that of _degrees_,
which are alone designated in the language of common use, is the first and
indispensable step in philosophy, so are we the better enabled to form a
notion of the _kind_, the lower the _degree_, and the simpler the form is
in which it appears to us. We study the complex in the simple; and only
from the intuition of the lower can we safely proceed to the intellection
of the higher degrees. The only danger lies in the leaping from low to
high, with the neglect of the intervening gradations. But the same error
would introduce discord into the gamut, _et ab abusu contra usum non valet
consequentia_. That these degrees will themselves bring forth secondary
kinds sufficiently distinct for all the purposes of science, and even for
common sense, will be seen in the course of this inquisition: for this is
one proof of the essential vitality of nature, that she does not ascend as
links in a suspended chain, but as the steps in a ladder; or rather she at
one and the same time _ascends_ as by a climax, and expands as the
concentric circles on the lake from the point to which the stone in its
fall had given the first impulse. At all events, a contemptuous rejection
of this mode of reasoning would come with an ill grace from a medical
philosopher, who cannot combine any three phenomena of health or of
disease without the assumption of powers, which he is compelled to deduce
without being able to demonstrate; nay, even of material substances as the
_vehicles_ of these powers, which he can never expect to exhibit before
the senses.

From the preceding it should appear, that the most comprehensive formula
to which life is reducible, would be that of the internal copula of
bodies, or (if we may venture to borrow a phrase from the Platonic school)
the _power_ which discloses itself from within as a principle of _unity_
in the _many_. But that there is a physiognomy in words, which, without
reference to their fitness or necessity, make unfavorable as well as
favorable impressions, and that every unusual term in an abstruse research
i