to the
crustaceous matter, or outward bones of a lobster, &c., whether the ingot
of gold expressed _life_, I should answer without hesitation, as the
_ingot_ of gold assuredly not, for its form is accidental and _ab extra_.
It may be added to or detracted from without in the least affecting the
nature, state, or properties in the specific matter of which the ingot
consists. But as _gold_, as that special union of absolute and of relative
gravity, ductility, and hardness, which, wherever they are found,
constitute _gold_, I should answer no less fearlessly, in the affirmative.
But I should further add, that of the two counteracting tendencies of
nature, namely, that of _detachment_ from the universal life, which
universality is represented to us by gravitation, and that of _attachment_
or reduction into it, this and the other noble metals represented the
units in which the latter tendency, namely, that of identity with the life
of nature, subsisted in the greatest overbalance over the former. It is
the form of unity with the least degree of tendency to individuation.

Rising in the ascent, I should take, as illustrative of the second step,
the various forms of crystals as a union, not of powers only, but of
parts, and as the simplest forms of composition in the next narrowest
sphere of affinity. Here the form, or apparent _quantity_, is manifestly
the result of the _quality_, and the chemist himself not seldom admits
them as infallible characters of the substances united in the whole of a
given crystal.

In the first step, we had Life, as the mere _unity_ of powers; in the
second we have the simplest forms of _totality_ evolved. The third step is
presented to us in those vast formations, the tracing of which generically
would form the science of Geology, or its history in the strict sense of
the word, even as their description and diagnostics constitute its
preliminaries.

Their claim to this rank I cannot here even attempt to support. It will be
sufficient to explain my reason for having assigned it to them, by the
avowal, that I regard them in a twofold point of view: 1st, as the residue
and product of vegetable and animal life; 2d, as manifesting the
tendencies of the Life of Nature to vegetation or animalization. And this
process I believe--in one instance by the peat morasses of the northern,
and in the other instance by the coral banks of the southern hemisphere--to
be still connected with the present order of ve