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Show 46 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. Combines 'vith Heat the fluctuating mass And gives a while solidity to gas; Organic forms \vith chemic changes strive, Live but to die, and die but to revive I Immortal matter braves the transient storm, CAN'TOIL 40 Mounts fron1 the wreck, unchanging but in form.--- Combines u.:it!t Heat, 1. 39. It was shown in note on liue 248 of the fir t Canto, that much of the aerial and liquid parts of the terra ·queous globe was converted by the powers of life into solid matter; and that thi was effected by the combination of the fluid, heat, with other elementary bodies by the appetencies and propensities of the parts of living matter to unite with each other. But when these appetencies and propel ities of the part of organic matter to unite with each other cease, the chemical affinities of attraction and the aptitude to be attracted, and of repul ion and the aptitude to be repelled, succeed, and reduce much of the solid matters back to the condition of elements; ·which seems to be effected by the matter of heat being again set at liberty, which was combined with other matter by the powet·s of life; and thus by its diffusion the solid bodies return into liquid ones or into gasses, as occurs in the processes of fermentation, putrefaction, sublimation, and calcination. 'Vhence solidity appears to be produced in consequence of the diminution of heat, as the condensation of steam into water, and the consolidation of water into ice, or by the combination of heat with bodie , as with the material of gun-powder before its explo ion. Immortal matter, 1. 43. The perpetual mutability of the forms of matter eems to ~ave ~truck the philosophers of great antiquity; the system of transm1grat10n taught by Pythagoras, in which the souls of m~n were suppo ed after d:ath to animate the bodies of a va1 iety of amrnals, appear to have ansen from this source. He bad observed the perpetual changes of organic matter from one creature to another and concluded, that the vivifying spirit must attend it. ' CANTO tr. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. . '' So, as the sages of the East record In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word; Emblem of Life, to change eternal doom'd, The beauteous form of fair AnoN Is bloom' d.-On Syrian hills the graceful Hunter slain 47 Dyed with his gushing blood the shuddering plain; 50 , And, s~ow-descending to the Elysian shade, A \Vhile with PRoSERPINE reluctant stray'd; Soon from the yawning grave the bursting clay Restor'd the Beauty to delighted day; Array'd in youth's resuscitated charms, . And young DroNE \v-oo'd him to her arms.- Emblem if Life, 1. 47. The Egyptian figure of Venus rising from ; • the sea seems to have represented the Beauty of organic Nature; which the philosophers of that country, the magi, appear to have discovered to have b en elevated by earthquakes from the primeval ocean. Dut tl e hieroglyphic figure of Adonis eems to have sign iiied the spirit of animation or life, which was perpetually wooed or courted by organic matter, and which perished and revived alter- · nately. Afterwanls the fab.e of Adonis seems to have given origin to the first religion promising a resurrection from the dead; whence his funeral and ret 1rn to life vere celebrated ror many ages in EgTpt and Syria, the... cere111 nies of' which Ezekiel complains as iclol- atro 1s, <1ccusi•1g tl10 vo.men of Israel of lamenting over Tham:mus; which St. Cyn inte1·prets to be Adonis, in his Commentaries on . Isaiah; Danet's Diction. |