accretion of similar substances, or the addition of like unto like; and as this occurs in crystallization, which is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter, therefore there is no fundamental difference between the properties of living and dead substances. We deny the first proposition; nutrition is not the only characteristic of life, and the nutritive process, whether in vegetables or animals, is not mere accretion, but assimilation. It has been said, though the assertion is by no means fully proved, that assimilation is only a finer kind of chemistry, the constituent principles being brought together only by their natural affinities. Even if this were true, if the stomach and the digestive apparatus were only a well furnished chemical laboratory, fit for conducting the most delicate experiments, the great difficulty would still remain. The question might yet be asked, Where is the chemist? And this is the fundamental question, which the materialists never attempt to answer, but quietly evade. The difference between an inorganic and an organic body has been explained by Coleridge clearly enough for our purpose. In the former,--a sheaf of corn, for instance,--the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts; in the latter,--an animal,--the whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts. In the latter case, the whole is every thing, and the parts are comparatively nothing. One of the great effects of life is to keep the parts in subjection to the whole, making them contribute to its support and growth, and thus maintaining the unity of the system. The stomach digests, the lungs inhale air, the heart beats, and the blood circulates; and as the joint effect, or as the common supporter,--it matters not which,--of these operations, _life_ continues, and the animated being is a unit; it has not merely virtual, but essential unity. The reciprocal action of the respiratory, circulating, and nervous systems is absolutely necessary to life. The animal dies, and this unity, this subservience of the parts to the whole, immediately ceases. In the functions of the living body, it may be that the ordinary laws of chemistry are preserved, and that the elements of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen combine and separate according to their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions. But after death, at any rate, quite a different set of chemical laws come into play, and produce a result which is the very opposite of that before effected. There is no longer any unanimity or cooeperation; instead of sustaining or building up the animal tissues, the affinities now in operation tear down, destroy, and resolve them into their ultimate elements,--each part following out its own law of destruction or resolution, irrespectively of the others.