CHAPTER VIII. 



OF THE FACULTIES COMMON TO ALL LIVING BODIES. 



It is a well-known and established fact that living bodies have faculties 

 which are common to all of them and belong to them as a consequence 

 of life itself. 



But I think that little attention has been paid to the fact that those 

 faculties common to all living bodies do not need any special organs 

 as a basis, whereas those faculties which are peculiar to certain bodies 

 only, are necessarily based on some special organ capable of producing 

 them. 



Doubtless no vital faculty can exist in a body without organisa- 

 tion ; and organisation is itself simply a collection of organs in com- 

 bination. But those organs, whose combination is necessary for the 

 existence of life, are not peculiar to any one portion of the body they 

 compose ; they are, on the contrary, distributed throughout this body, 

 and they bring life to every part of it, as also the essential faculties 

 which spring from life. Hence the faculties common to all living 

 bodies are exclusively due to the same causes which lead to the exist- 

 ence of life. 



The case is different with the special organs that give rise to the 

 faculties belonging only to certain living bodies : life can exist without 

 them ; but when nature achieved their creation, the chief of them 

 have so close a connection with the order of things existing in the body, 

 that they then become necessary for the maintenance of life in that 

 body. 



Thus it is only in the simplest organisations that life can erist with- 

 out special organs ; these organisations are then incapable of pro- 

 ducing any other faculty than those common to all living bodies. 



On starting an investigation as to the essential properties of life, 

 we must distinguish the phenomena belonging to all bodies which 

 possess life, from those which are peculiar to some of those bodies : 

 and since the phenomena presented by living bodies are a measure of 



