independent faculties. Cuvier[1] also looked upon nutrition as the characteristic property of living matter; for life consists, he observes, in the faculty possessed by certain corporeal combinations of enduring for a time under some determinate form, of drawing incessantly into their composition portions of surrounding substances, and of giving back to the elements portions of their own substance."
Note 3, p. 66. With respect to some of those faculties, &c.] It is the purport of this passage to shew that, by experiment and observation, we may obtain an insight into the organs and functions of the body; but that, as the mental faculties do not admit of being so scrutinized, the investigation of them is, necessarily, obscure and complicated. The distinction between sentient properties and mental faculties is further exemplified by the lower forms of animal existence, which continue to live, after having been divided, in each of the parts; and as each part has locomotion and manifests feeling, it is assumed that it must also have imagination (instinct ?) and desire. But nothing at all resembling this can be predicated of the mind, since, being indiscerptible, it is without parts, and, so constituted, it cannot be subject to the change or dissolution of the body.
Note 4, p. 67. But something very like this has taken place, &c.] Aristotle[2] is everywhere consistent with what is advanced here—for an animal is defined by him as a
