178 THE WORLD AS WILL. BK. II.
and is without significance for the force itself. Through thousands of years chemical forces slumber in matter till the contact with the reagents sets them free; then they appear; but time exists only for the phenomena, not for the forces themselves. For thousands of years galvanism slumbered in copper and zinc, and they lay quietly beside silver, which must be consumed in flame as soon as all three are brought together under the required conditions. Even in the organic kingdom we see a dry seed preserve the slumbering force through three thousand years, and when at last the favourable circumstances occur, grow up as a plant.[1]
If by this exposition the difference between a force of nature and all its phenomena has been made quite distinct; if we have seen clearly that the former is the will itself at this particular grade of its objectification, but that multiplicity comes to phenomena only through time and space, and that the law of causality is nothing but the determination of the position of these phenomena in time and space; then we shall recognise the complete truth and the deep meaning of Malebranche's doctrine of occasional causes (causes occasionelles). It is well worth
- ↑ On the 16th of September 1840, at a lecture upon Egyptian Archæology delivered by Mr. Pettigrew at the Literary and Scientific Institute of London, he showed some corns of wheat which Sir G. Wilkinson had found in a grave at Thebes, in which they must have lain for three thousand years. They were found in an hermetically sealed vase. Mr. Pettigrew had sowed twelve grains, and obtained a plant which grew five feet high, and the seeds of which were now quite ripe. — Times, 21st September 1840. In the same way in 1830 Mr. Haulton produced in the Medical Botanical Society of London a bulbous root which was found in the hand of an Egyptian mummy, in which it was probably put in observance of some religious rite, and which must have been at least two thousand years old. He had planted it in a flower-pot, in which it grew up and flourished. This is quoted from the Medical Journal of 1830 in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, October 1830, p. 196. — "In the garden of Mr. Grimstone of the Herbarium, Highgate. London, is a pea in full fruit, which has sprung from a pea that Mr. Pettigrew and the officials of the British Museum took out of a vase which had been found in an Egyptian sarcophagus, where it must have lain 2844 years." — Times, 16th August 1844. Indeed, the living toads found in limestone lead to the conclusion that even animal life is capable of such a suspension for thousands of years, if this is begun in the dormant period and maintained by special circumstances.
