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itself as such in the scientific apprehension of natural phenomena. That dynamical play of the inner life, that law of a living force which constitutes the essence of every phenomenon of nature, is a something so fleeting and evanescent that it can only be seized and fixed by the fancy alone, since, as is now pretty generally allowed by all profound observers of nature, in the abstract notion life eludes the grasp, and nothing remains but a dead formula.

      The apprehension of a living object in thought, so as to seize and fix it in its mobile vitality and its fluctuating and fleeting states, is an act of the imagination, which, however, is naturally of a peculiar kind, and entirely distinct from artistic or poetical fancy. It is, in this respect, worthy of remark, that all the most characteristic and felicitous terms which are employed to designate the great discoveries in modern times of the profounder secrets of nature are, for the greater part, boldly figurative, and often even symbolical. Here, therefore, also, we have a manifestation of that affinity which subsists between nature and the faculty of fancy, by which alone its ever-stirring vitality is scientifically apprehended.

      I formerly observed that, in the outer senses, as faculties of the soul subordinate to the fancy, a higher intellectual endowment, as a special gift of nature, is occasionally found to exist, namely, the sense of art, or the eye for beautiful forms, and the ear for musical sounds. But even the lower sense, the more purely organic feeling, is often evolved to higher degrees of susceptibility, which, however, do not fall within the sphere of the feeling for art, but form, as it were, a peculiar and special sense of nature. To this class belong those indescribable feelings of sympathy and inward attraction—the many vivid presentiments of a strange foreboding—traces of which may be observed among many other animals besides man, just as, in the case of musical tones and emotions, a light note of remote affinity seems to bring the soul of man in unison with a correspondent nature soul in the higher members of the brute creation. Numberless are the instances of such forebodings (among which we must reckon also the significant vision or dream) recorded of all times, countries, and spheres of life. No doubt, from their strange nature, and from the manifold difficulties with which man’s mode of observing and narrating these phenomena perplexes the consideration of them, it is any thing but easy, in any individual case, to arrive at a pure result, and to pass a final and decisive sentence. Still, on the whole, the fact can not well be denied, as, indeed, it is not even attempted, by any unprejudiced and profound observer of nature in the present day. But now, if such an immediate feeling of invisible light and life does freely develop and clearly manifest itself as an indubitable faculty and a perfectly distinct state of the consciousness, then assuredly we have herein a new organ of perception and a new natural sense. Though not, indeed, more infallible than any other of the senses, it may, nevertheless, be the source of very remarkable phenomena, which, perhaps, above all others require investigation, in order that their distinctive character may be precisely and accurately determined. It is, however, necessary to remember that the latter is not to be determined by any side-blow of caprice, any more than the electric phenomena of nature and the atmosphere, when they are actually lowering there, are to be got rid of by any such expedient.

      It is only just and right, and not inconsistent with true human knowledge, if physical science should commence with the study of man. Still, if we would contemplate man from the side of nature, it seems the safer course to endeavor, first of all, to obtain a clear and leading idea of the whole of his constitution in this respect, rather than to lose ourselves in the contemplation of the special phenomena of a particular sphere. Now, with regard to the whole of man’s organization, the organic body as the third constituent of human existence, I will merely remark that, just as the triple principle of body, soul, and spirit is repeated in the special and narrower spheres of the senses, the instincts, and the passions, and even in the different forms in which a disordered intellect usually manifests itself, so also it admits of a further application to the organic body in general. That most wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles, the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense, the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of man—here consequently the organic soul—is in the blood and in the five or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood and afterward to provide for its circulation—or perhaps by maintaining a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. A third element—and, indeed, the principal one of the three, though only noticeable in its effects on the brain—exists within the higher senses and functions—in short, in the whole nervous tissue. But it lies not in the nervous filaments themselves: anatomy can not detect it, for it is not visible to the eye. On this account some have called it the æther of the nerves to indicate its incorporeal nature—incorporeal, i.e., relatively to, and in comparison with, the other two constituents of man—the blood-soul, and the external frame—as being the spirit of life in the organic body. Strictly and sharply enough does Holy Writ distinguish this spiritual body (as it calls it) of man from the body of the soul, or the organic blood-soul, considering the former, as it were, the seed of the resurrection, even because at the moment of death this ethereal body-of-light leaves its terrestrial veil to be in due time reunited to it after a more glorious fashion. And death itself is even nothing else than its total departure and painful emancipation from the organic body, on which the features, one might almost say, the physiognomy of corruption stamps itself, immediately that the immortal Psyche, the invisible seed of light and eternity, has put off the tabernacle of this body.

      This internal, invisible body-of-light [Lichtkorper] is also the organ and the center of all the higher and spiritual powers of the human organization. For it is easily conceivable that a partial projection of this life of light which is latent in the sound organic body should produce such phenomena, while its complete projection, or rather total separation, would have death for its result, or rather would itself be death. A truly scientific view of nature can easily enter into or allow the legitimacy of this idea. The true rule, however, and standard for the right decision of phenomena of this kind can only be found in a higher region, even because they themselves lie on the extreme limits of nature and life, and in part also pass beyond them.

      We therefore prefer to follow the more slow but sure course of development pursued by physical science itself, as commenced nearly twenty-five centuries ago by the Greeks. On the whole it began even there with the cognition of man—of his diseases and their cure. The naturalists, indeed, of the present day are in general disposed to laugh at the ideas of nature which were advanced by the first philosophers of Greece, and to despise the hypotheses of water, or air, or fire, as being the essence of all things, which, nevertheless, as the first beginnings of a clearer contemplation and of a higher view of nature, greatly recommend themselves by their extreme simplicity. But however modern observers of nature may be ready to hand these systems over to fancy as so many purely poetical cosmogonies, yet, on the other hand, the present masters of medicine, with greater gratitude and fuller acknowledgment of his merits, reverence Hippocrates as the founder of their art. For, indeed, as such, and not properly as a science, or at any rate as an art far more than as a science, was medicine regarded by its founder and the great masters who came after him. They looked upon it as the art of the diagnosis and treatment of disease, in which the unerring tact of a practiced and happy judgment is of primary importance, and where the rapid and searching glance of genius into the secret laboratories of life or into the hidden sources of disease is, and ever will be, the principal and most essential point. The mere historical acquaintance with the different forms of diseases and their remedies, with botany, and the anatomy of the human body, with the number and structure of its organs, forms merely the materials, the external sphere of medical practice; while the essential qualification is even this penetrating glance which searches out the inmost secrets of the bodily temperament. But now those who have been most richly gifted with this peculiar gift have ever been the last to believe themselves possessed of a perfect science. And yet, inasmuch as that physical knowledge which, by attaining to a complete understanding of life, shall be able to comprehend and explain the mystery of death would alone deserve the name of the science of nature; inasmuch also as the searching glance of the true physician arrives the nearest to such a point, penetrating, as it does, deep into the manifold fluctuation and struggle between the two, and into the secrets of their conflict, this, therefore, is perhaps to be considered as the first germ of life for a future science of nature, which, however as yet undeveloped,

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