Note 7 — Chapter II

“According to the Pythagoreans and Platonists, there is a life infused throughout all things ... an intellectual and artificial fire—an inward principle, animal spirit, or natural life, producing or forming within, as art doth without—regulating, moderating, and reconciling the various motions, qualities, and parts of the mundane system. By virtue of this life, the great masses are held together in their ordinary courses, as well as the minutest particles governed in their natural motions, according to the several laws of attraction, gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the rest. It is this gives instincts, teaches the spider her web, and the bee her honey;—this it is that directs the roots of plants to draw forth juice from the earth, and the leaves and the cortical vessels to separate and attract such particles of air and elementary fire as suit their respective natures.”—Bishop Berkeley, Siris, No. 277.