and repeats his formula of decomposition and recomposition.  As attraction in the planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical expression, so life in the plant is to be known only as decomposition and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances.  Think of it as such—­no more.  But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something I do not know.  Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what life is.  Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks why?  Child!  I respond, that the hands do move is an ultimate fact—­so, represent it to yourself—­and here, moreover, is the law of their movement—­the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter revolves once.  This is knowledge, and will be of use to you—­more you cannot understand.  And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.

But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth—­what is this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing, seeking, this way and that, its pasture?—­what have we here? Irritability and a tissue. Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself—­what is this? Sensation and a nerve. Does the nerve feel? you inconsiderately ask, or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which sensation resides?  A smile of derision plays on the lip of the philosopher. There is sensation—­you cannot express the fact in simpler or more general terms.  Turn your enquiries, or your microscope, on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected.  Ask not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of ontology.  And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter?  Not more perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the surface of the earth.  Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, think?—­does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, feel?—­they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle.  Phenomena are the sole subjects of science.  Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe.  Come with me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with which it is, or was, connected.