separately considered. The few observations that follow are not altogether irrelevant to the subject of these pages, nor is there any thing beyond the range of legitimate enquiry, in the consideration of the nature of that power which is the source of animation. Were we, indeed, to jump at the summary conclusion, that life is the sum total of the functions, as some have asserted, we should fall into the error of mistaking a subordinate effect for an original cause; forgetting, that although life is co-existent with the developement and cessation of these functions, it is the nervous energy which calls them into action. Whatever be its nature, it is yet an intermediate link, evident, though not obvious in that perpetual chain of cause and effect which is the connecting medium between animation and the great Author of it. "The first link of that chain," says Darwin, "is riveted to the throne of God, dividing itself into innumerable diverging branches, which, like the nerves arising from the brain, permeate the most minute and most remote extremities of the system, diffusing motion and sensation through the whole. "As every cause is superior in power to the effect which it has produced, so our idea of the power of the Almighty Creator becomes more elevated and sublime, as we trace the operations of nature from cause to cause; climbing up the links of those chains of beings, till we ascend to the great source of all things." The doctrine which would have us suppose that this wonderful machine, the human frame, originated in a fortuitous concourse of atoms, has its error in failing to trace the causes of the combination of matter to their remote origin, and therefore chaos and its products are to this system what nature and the results of her well-ordered designs, are to true philosophy. The doctrine we al lude to confounds the attributes of mind with the properties of matter, by referring the mental faculties to the aggregation of the functions of the body. This is not only the error of ascribing remote results to their nearest origins, but of referring dissimilar effects to the same immutable cause. This doctrine, like that of Pythagoras, travels in a continual circle of life and death, and the only two truths it admits are,—death, because it is certain and inevitable, and reproduction, because every thing that lives must die and undergo the process of decomposition, before its particles again acquire vitality, and enter into the formation of new compounds. The whole history of humanity is to this system one series of transformations, "Nothing of it that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rare and strange." To it, of all abodes, the grave is the most pregnant with vitality; every corse that is consigned to earth, confers life on myriads of other creatures who had not known that enjoyment if death had not occurred. But even though every atom on the surface of the earth may have been a portion of something once living, now inertthough humanity may not shuffle off its "mortal coil," without peopling the clay which covers it with its spoils, where is the spirit to be sought that animated man—in what unhallowed receptacle has the aura of intellect taken up its abode? "Thou apart, Above, beyond, O tell me, mighty mind, Where art thou?" In this dreary doctrine, trivial truths are curiously con sidered, and those of most importance wholly overlooked. It illustrates the horrors of death, and renders the hope of future life a repugnant feeling, a loathsome anticipation. Its lights are like the lamps in sepulchres, they gleam upon the dead, but they give no lustre to the living. That light of life, that god-like apprehension which renders man the monarch of created beings, is wholly lost sight of in the inquiry after the final disposition of the particles of which his body is composed. Life and death have their analogies for this system, but the spirit of man and immortality have none! There is no link between humanity and heaven! The body is allowed to have its transformations, but the mind is not worthy of a transmigration, not even to be portioned among the worms which have their being in our forms. By whatever name this vital principle is designated, animus or anima, aura or efflatus, spark or flame, etherial or celestial, perplexity at every step besets the doctrine of its extinction. And however speciously, and even sincerely, its entertainer may uphold it, still in secret there are, there must be, misgivings of its truth. "And yet one doubt Pursues him still, lest all he cannot die-- In a word, the error of this doctrine, like that of many others, is, in attributing obvious effects to their immediate instead of their remote and ultimate cause, and in tracing similitudes in dissimilar analogies. CHAPTER V. THE NERVOUS ENERGY. The nature of this vital fluid has been the enquiry of all ages, and up to the present time it must be admitted that nothing is known of its essence. Its effects, both in animal and vegetable life, have been found in some important respects to be analogous with those of an agent the most wonderful in nature, the most subtile of all fluids, the most powerful of all stimulants in its action on the life, whether of plants or animals-the electric fluid. Although science (with all the rapidity of its march) has thrown little if any additional light on its phenomena for the last thirty years, yet a few facts have been noticed whose tendency is to show that there is a similitude between the phenomena of the nervous and the electric fluids. Whenever the properties of the latter shall be better understood than they are at present, in all probability the principle of the nervous energy will be more cognizable to the range (limited as it must necessarily always be) of human knowledge. A day, in all probability, will come when the genius of some future Franklin will make that "fifth element," and most powerful of all, better known than it now is; and trace the analogies of the subtle spark which pervades all space, with that corporeal fire which fills the nerves with life, and heat, and communicates vitality and vigour, to every fibre of the heart and its remotest vessels. The nature of the nervous energy may then become better understood, and that invisible aura which fans the blood and invigorates the body, be known to us by something more than its effects. 66 "In this view," to use the words of one who applied electrical agency to the grandest discoveries of our time, we do not look to distant ages, or amuse ourselves with brilliant, though delusive dreams, concerning infinite improbability or the annihilation of disease or death. But we reason by analogy from simple facts. We consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition; we look for a time that we may reasonably expect, for a bright day of which we already behold the dawn!" The influence which electricity exerts over vegetable life, till very lately has been overlooked, and even now the same fashion which domineers in academies as well as in boudoirs, has rendered the doctrine of animal, or rather vital electricity, as apparently ridiculous as that of electro-chemical agency was considered, before Davy, by its means, changed the whole face of that science which he so nobly cultivated. Nothing, perhaps, has tended more to the discredit of this theory than the inordinate expectations which medical electricity called forth some forty or fifty years ago, when it was ushered into practice as a universal remedy, and which shared the fate of all new remedies whose powers are over-rated, abused, and ultimately decried. But of late years, on the continent, the influence of the electric fluid on vitality has again forced itself on public attention; and in the south of France we have seen whole vineyards in which numerous electrical conductors were attached to the plants, for the purpose of increasing the progress of vegetation, and of invigorating the vines. |