CHAPTER VIL 



OF THE IMMEDIATE RESULTS OF LIFE IN A BODY. 



The laws controlling all the transformations that we observe in nature, 

 although everywhere the same and never in contradiction with one 

 another, produce very different results in Uving bodies from what they 

 cause in Ufeless bodies. The results indeed are quite opposite. 



In the former, by virtue of the order and state of things characteristic 

 of living bodies, these laws are constantly striving and succeeding 

 in forming combinations between principles which otherwise would 

 never have been joined together, and in complicating these combina- 

 tions and adding to them a superfluity of constituent elements ; so 

 that the totaUty of living bodies may be regarded as an immense 

 and ever active laboratory from which all existing compounds were 

 originally derived. 



In the latter, on the contrary, that is to say in bodies without life, 

 where there is no force to harmonise their movements and maintain 

 their integrity, these same laws are incessantly tending to decompose 

 existing combinations, to simphfy them or reduce the complexity of 

 their composition ; so that in course of time they disengage nearly 

 all their constituent principles from their state of combination. 



This line of thought leads to developments, which when thoroughly 

 understood and apphed to all the known facts, cannot but show more 

 and more the truth of the principle which I have been setting forth. 



This course of study however is very different from that which has 

 hitherto occupied the attention of savants ; they had observed that the 

 results of the laws of nature in living bodies were quite different from 

 those produced in lifeless bodies, and they attributed the curious 

 facts observed in the former to special laws, although in reality they are 

 only due to the difference of the conditions between these bodies and 

 in bodies that are destitute of life. They did not see that the nature 

 of living bodies, that is, the state and order of things which produce 

 life in them, give to the laws which regulate them a special direction. 



