LAMARCK’S THEORY OF DESCENT 329 
movements, execute, as I have said, contractile move- 
ments which, provoked and varied without ceasing 
by this stimulating cause, facilitate and hasten the 
absorptions of which I have just spoken.” . . . 
On the Transportation of the force-producing Move- 
ments in the Interior of Animals. 
“If nature were confined to the employment of its 
first means—namely, of a force entirely external and 
foreign to the animal—its work would have remained 
very important; the animals would have remained 
machines totally passive, and she would never have 
given origin in any of these living beings to the ad- 
mirable phenomena of sensibility, of inmost feelings 
of existence which result therefrom, of the power of 
action, finally, of ideas, by which she can create the 
most wonderful of all, that of thought—in a word, 
intelligence. 
“ But, wishing to attain these grand results, she has 
by slow degrees prepared the means, in gradually 
giving consistence to the internal parts of animals; 
in differentiating the organs, and in multiplying and 
farther forming the fluids contained, etc., after which 
she has transported into the interior of these animals 
that force productive of movements and of actions 
which in truth it would not dominate at first, but 
which she has come to place, in great part, at their 
disposition when their organization should become 
very much more perfect. 
“Indeed, from the time that the animal organiza- 
tion had sufficiently advanced in its structure to pos- 
sess a nervous system—even slightly developed, as in 
insects—the animals provided with this organization 
were endowed with an intimate sense of their exist- 
ence, and from that time the force productive of 
movements was conveyed into the very interior of 
the animal. 
