350 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



kidneys are in reality unpaired. Similarly, he endeavours to show that the 

 animal functions are always "harmonious," while the organic are "dis- 

 cordant," by which is meant that it makes no difference if one lung functions 

 more or less than the other, whereas dissimilarity in the visual or auditory 

 organs causes serious disturbances; the lack of a gift for music Bichat con- 

 siders to be due to the fact that the ears possess different powers of hearing. 

 He does not include the sexual organs in either category, because they serve 

 the genus and not the individual. Of the psychical qualities, the intelligence 

 belongs to animal life, while the passions are derived from organic life, from 

 disturbances in the digestion and the blood-circulation. The community is 

 thus only a development of animal life, while the passions have brought about 

 all human disasters — revolutions and reigns of terror. In all this Bichat 

 shows an inclination for sophistry, which not infrequently accompanies a 

 highly developed genius for the purely formal. Several others of his sys- 

 tematic divisions are also by no means wholly successful. At all events, if 

 only for the new system that he introduced into anatomical science, Bichat 

 must be counted as one of the greatest pioneers of that science that have ever 

 lived. Considerations of space forbid a more detailed account of his thorough 

 exposition of the different tissue systems which he gives in his general anat- 

 omy, as also of his application of it to the theory of organs in his descrip- 

 tive anatomy. His work contains no histology in the modern sense, but this 

 is only natural, as he refuses to learn from microscopical observation; on 

 the contrary, he dismisses with some compassion Leeuwenhoek's attempts at 

 determining the form and size of muscular fibrillar; the true nature of muscu- 

 lar fibre is unknown, and that is all there is to be said about it. He is far 

 more interested in the chemical composition of the tissues, as far as it was 

 possible to ascertain it in those days, and in their condition under processes 

 of drying and maceration. It is at any rate the topography of the tissues that 

 chiefly engages his attention; their finer quality did not concern him; for 

 instance, Malpighi certainly knew more about the structure of the brain 

 than he did. Bichat 's greatness, then, lies in his having so convincingly 

 proved the quality of the tissues as fundamental constituents of the body and 

 its functions. He thereby placed the study of the phenomena of life on a defi- 

 nite basis, the value of which is best realized if we compare his tissue theory 

 with the fantastic ideas of a "nervous fluid" and "microscopical life-units," 

 in which the works of even the most brilliant biologists of the imme- 

 diately preceding epoch abound. Even the terms "sensibility" and "con- 

 tractility," which were invented by him, have been incorporated in modern 

 terminology. And although his ideas of the application of physics and chem- 

 istry to biology must appear primitive to a modern reader, still, he had the 

 eye of a genius for essentials in the contrast between animate and inanimate 

 matter, which many a modern biologist has lacked. That he so strongly 



