according to which these elements group themselves, conforming to those definite types of structure by means of which they produce different species of chemical compounds.
Continuity by Summation.—The idea of summation leads by another path to the same result. It is another form of the principle of continuity. A sum total of effects, obscure and indistinct in themselves, produces a phenomenon appreciable, perceptible, and distinct, apparently, but not really, heterogeneous in its components. The manifestations of atomic or molecular activity thus become manifestations of vital activity.
This is another consequence of the teaching of Leibniz. For, according to his philosophical theory, individual consciousness, like individual life, is the collective expression of a multitude of elementary lives or consciousnesses. These elements are inappreciable because of their low degree, and the real phenomenon is found in the sum, or rather the integral, of all these insensible effects. The elementary consciousnesses are harmonized, unified, integrated into a result that becomes manifest, just as "the sounds of the waves, not one of which would be heard if by itself, yet, when united together and perceived at the same instant, become the resounding voice of the ocean."
Ideas of the Philosophers as to Sensibility and Consciousness in Brute Bodies.—The philosophers have gone still further in the way of analogies, and have recognized in the play of the forces of brute matter, particularly in the play of chemical forces, a mere rudiment of the appetitions and tendencies that regulate, as they believe, the functional activity of living
