MARIE FRANgOIS XAVIER BICHAT 169 

 as well as in medicine, that which is derived from one, and that which 

 flows from others ; in ascertaining by rigorous induction the natural 

 and morbific phenomena which the animal properties produce, and 

 those which are derived from the organic; and in pointing out when 

 the animal sensibility and contractility are brought into action, and 

 when the organic sensibility and the sensible or insensible contractility. 

 We shall be easily convinced upon reflection, that we cannot precisely 

 estimate the immense influence of the vital properties in the physio- 

 logical sciences, before we have considered these properties in the 

 point of view in which I have presented them. It will be said, per- 

 haps, that this manner of viewing them is still a theory ; I will answer 

 that it is a theory like that which shows in the physical sciences, grav- 

 ity, elasticity, affinity, etc., as the primitive principles of the facts ob- 

 served in these sciences. The relation of these properties as causes to 

 the phenomena as effects, is an axiom so well known in physics, chem- 

 istry, astronomy, etc., at the present day, that it is unnecessary to re- 

 peat it. If this work establishes an analogous axiom in the physio- 

 logical sciences, its object will be attained. 



OBSERVATIONS UPON THE ORGANIZATION OF ANIMALS 



The properties, whose influence we have just analyzed, are not 

 absolutely inherent in the particles of matter that are the seat of them. 

 They disappear when these scattered particles have lost their organic 

 arrangement. It is to this arrangement that they exclusively belong ; 

 let us treat of it here in a general way. 



All animals are an assemblage of different organs, which, executing 

 each a function, concur in their own manner, to the preservation of 

 the whole. It is several separate machines in a general one, that con- 

 stitutes the individual. Now these separate machines are themselves 

 formed by many textures of a very different nature, and which really 

 compose the elements of these organs. Chemistry has its simple 

 bodies, which form, by the combination of which they are susceptible, 

 the compound bodies ; such are caloric, light, hydrogen, oxygen, car- 

 bon azote, phosphorus, etc. In the same way anatomy has its simple 

 textures, which, by their combinations four with four, six with six, 

 eight with eight, etc., make the organs. These textures, are, ist, the 

 cellular; 2d, the nervous of animal life; 3d, the nervous of organic 



