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The word nisus I have adopted chiefly to express an energy truly vital, and therefore to distinguish it as clearly as possible from powers merely mechanical, by which some physiologists formerly endeavoured to explain generation.

Now, taking as the point of departure the first creative nisus or effort of the Deity, this is true.

It may be called a power arbitrary and contingent; but this means only that it is a power which absolutely puts forth its own nisus, and is free.

This nisus naturae is never absent; it is observable even where, as in the generation of “monsters” by living organisms, it partially fails to attain its end.

Some have confounded it with the mystical nisus formativus, or formative principle of preceding theorists.