LAMARCK’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 6, 
exist. And, indeed, though it is not believed, as 
some.naturalists have wrongly held, but without 
proof, that plants are bodies more simple in organi- 
zation than the most simple animals, it is a veritable 
error which observation plainly denies. 
“ Truly, vegetable substance is less surcharged with 
constituent principles than any animal substance 
whatever, or at least most of them, but the substance 
of a living body and the organization of these bodies 
are two very different things. But there is in plants, 
as in animals, a true gradation in organization from 
the plant simplest in organization and parts up to 
plants the most complex in structure and with the 
most diversified organs. 
“Tf there is some approach, or at least some com- 
parison to make between vegetables and animals, this 
can only be by opposing plants the most simply 
organized, like fungi and alge, to the most imperfect 
animals like the polyps, and especially the amorphous 
polyps, which occur in the lowest order. 
“ At present we clearly see that in order to bring 
about the existence of animals of all the classes, of all 
the orders, and of all the genera, nature has had to 
begin by giving existence to those which are the most 
simple in organization and lacking most in organs 
and faculties, the frailest in constituency, the most 
ephemeral, the quickest and easiest to multiply ; and 
we shall find in the amorphous or microscopic polyps 
the most striking examples of this simplification of 
organization, and the indication that it is solely among 
them that occur the astonishing germs of animality. 
“ At present we only know the principal law of the 
organization, the power of the exercise of the func- 
tions of life, the influence of the movement of fluids 
in the supple parts of organic bodies, and the power 
which the regenerations have of conserving the prog- 
ress acquired in the composition of organs. 
“ At present, finally, relying on numerous observa- 
