derived from one and the same principle; and if not from
one and the same, what that is which combines the parts,
and makes them to be one. The passage which follows
is an evident allusion to the Timæus, according to which,
as has been said, reason is placed, as in a soil fit for
the heavenly seed, in the brain, the appetite and passions
in the heart, liver, or spleen; and then comes the ques-
tion, what so connects those organs as to make them
mutually subsidiary to one another? not the body, cer-
tainly, it may be answered, as the body itself is but the
instrument of the Vital Principle.
Note 11, p. 55. But the living principle in plants, &c.]
This passage is, to appearance, obscure, owing to its construc-
tion and scientific wording, but yet its meaning is obvious:
the living principle in plants, that which constitutes their
vitality, is assimilation, (growth, through nutrition, that
is,) and it exists in plants without sentient properties;
but sentient properties cannot, of course, exist without
nutrition, as nutrition is essential to life, and present,
therefore, in every thing which lives.