------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE CORRELATION OF VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. In the Syracusan Poecile, says Alexander von Humboldt in his beautiful little allegory of the Rhodian Genius, hung a painting, which, for full a century, had continued to attract the attention of every visitor. In the foreground of this picture a numerous company of youths and maidens of earthly and sensuous appearance gazed fixedly upon a haloed Genius who hovered in their midst. A butterfly rested upon his shoulder, and he held in his hand a flaming torch. His every lineament bespoke a celestial origin. The attempts to solve the enigma of this painting—whose origin even was unknown—though numerous, were all in vain, when one day a ship arriving from Rhodes, laden with works of art, brought another picture, at once recognized as its companion. As before, the Genius stood in the center, but the butterfly had disappeared, and the torch was reversed and extinguished. The youths and maidens were no longer sad and submissive, their mutual embraces announcing their entire emancipation from restraint. Still unable to solve the riddle, Dionysius sent the pictures to the Pythagorean sage, Epicharmus. After gazing upon them long and earnestly, he said: Sixty years long have I pondered on the internal springs of nature, and on the differences inherent in matter; but it is only this day that the Rhodian Genius has taught me to see clearly that which before I had only conjectured. In inanimate nature, everything seeks its like. Everything, as soon as formed, hastens to enter into new combinations, and nought save the disjoining art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which ye would vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving oceans of air and water. Different, however, is the blending of the same substances in animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force imperatively asserts its rights, and heedless of the affinity and antagonism of the atoms, unites substances which in inanimate nature ever flee from each other, and separates that which is incessantly striving to unite. Recognize, therefore, in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of his youthful vigor, in the butterfly on his shoulder, in the commanding glance of his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates every germ of organic creation. The earthly elements at his feet are striving to gratify their own desires and to mingle with one another. Imperiously the Genius threatens them with upraised and high-flaming torch, and compels them regardless of their ancient rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the new work of art; turn from life to death. The butterfly has soared upward, the extinguished torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is drooping; the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is extinct.