If, now, we look for some trait common to the nutritive and logical processes, by which they are distinguished from those inorganic processes that are most like them in the heterogeneity of the simultaneous and successive changes they comprise, we discover that they are distinguished by the _combination_ among their constituent changes. The acts which make up digestion are mutually dependent. Those composing a train of reasoning are in close connection. And, generally, it is to be remarked of vital changes, that each is made possible by all, and all are affected by each. Respiration, circulation, absorption, secretion, in their many sub-divisions, are bound up together. Muscular contraction involves chemical change, change of temperature, and change in the excretions. Active thought influences the operations of the stomach, of the heart, of the kidneys. But we miss this union among non-vital activities. Life-like as may seem the action of a volcano in respect of the heterogeneity of its many simultaneous and successive changes, it is not life-like in respect of their combination. Though the chemical, mechanical, thermal, and electric phenomena exhibited have some inter-dependence, yet the emissions of stones, mud, lava, flame, ashes, smoke, steam, take place irregularly in quantity, order, intervals, and mode of conjunction. Even here, however, it cannot be said that inanimate things present no parallels to animate ones. A glacier may be instanced as showing nearly as much combination in its change as a plant of the lowest organization. It is ever growing and ever decaying; and the rates of its composition and decomposition preserve a tolerably constant ratio. It moves; and its motion is in immediate dependence on its thawing. It emits a torrent of water, which, in common with its motion, undergoes annual variations as plants do. During part of the year the surface melts and freezes alternately; and on these changes depend the variations in movement, and in efflux of water. Thus we have growth, decay, changes of temperature, changes of consistence, changes of velocity, changes of excretion, all going on in connexion; and it may be as truly said of a glacier as of an animal, that by ceaseless integration and disintegration it gradually undergoes an entire change of substance without losing its individuality. This exceptional instance, however, will scarcely be held to obscure that broad distinction from inorganic processes which organic processes derive from the combination among their constituent changes. And the reality of this distinction becomes yet more manifest when we find that, in common with previous ones, it not only marks off the living from the not-living, but also things which live little from things which live much. For while the changes going on in a plant or a zoophyte are so imperfectly combined that they can continue after it has been divided into two or more pieces, the combination among the changes going on