ON THE VITAL PRINCIPLE.

7

let go tlieir contents, which mix in confusion, andthenceforth yield to the laws of chemistry alone.Just so it happens, sooner or later, to the otherparts of the animal as well as vegetable frame. Che-mical changes, putrefaction and destruction, im-mediately follow the total privation cf life, the im-portance of which becomes instantly evident whenit is no more. I humbly conceive therefore, that ifthe human understanding can in any case flatteritself with obtaining, in the natural world, a glimpseof the immediate agency of the Deity, it is in the con-templation of this vital principle, which seems inde-pendent of material organization, and an impulse ofhis own divine energy.

Nor am I ashamed to confess that I can no moreexplain the physiology of vegetables than of animals,without this hypothesis, as I allow ii to be, of a liv-ing principle in both. Chemistry seems to me nomore competent to develop our vital functions, thanthe humoral pathology of old could explain our dis-eases. To argue from dead to living matter is asolecism. The able Mr. Chevalier , so recently lostto his country, has shown this on the most suitableof all occasions*, the anniversary of the birtfy of thegreat man to whose name and memory the Hunterian

* See the Hunterian Oration delivered before the Royal College ofSurgeons in London , on the 14th of February 1821, by Thomas Che­ valier , F.R.S. F.S.A. and F.L.S. Surgeon Extraordinary to the King.London 1821.