116 M., G. Cuvier's Report on the Researches 



the most mysterious and the most contradictory of all. This 

 innovation consists in generalizing the idea of sensibiUty to 

 such a degree, as to give that name to eveiy nervous coope- 

 ration accompanied with motion, even when the animal had 

 no perception of it. Thus were established organic and local 

 sensibilities, upon which the supporters of the system founded 

 reasonings only applicable to ordinary and general sensi- 

 bility. According to these physiologists, the stomach, the 

 heart, the uterus, felt and willed, and each organ became a 

 sort of lesser independent animal endowed with the faculties 

 of the greater. 



This interversion of the use of terms was singularly fa^ 

 voured, and even increased, by the double sense of which most 

 of these tei'ms are susceptible in our language. In fact, sensi- 

 ble, in French, signifies, at the same time, capable of experi- 

 encing sensations, capable of giving them, capable of con- 

 ducting them. It is used in the first sense, when we say an 

 animal is a sensible * being ; in the second, when we speak 

 of a sensible sound or light ; in the third, when physiologists 

 affirm that the nerves are sensible. Writers of great talent 

 have deceived themselves to such a degree by tlie employ- 

 ment of these figurative and ambiguous expressions, that they 

 thought they had explained phenomena, when, in fact, they 

 had only translated the expression of them into metaphorical 

 language ; and it must be confessed that this illusion has com- 

 municated itself to a great number of their readers. For- 

 tunately it has not seduced men accustomed to rigorous dis- 

 quisition ; they give to every expression a sense fixed by a 

 positive definition, and they avoid with the utmost care the 

 use of it in any other acceptation, well knowing that they 

 would thus expose themselves to the danger of falling into 

 that kind of sophism which is one of most frequent occur- 

 rence, designated by logicians under the name of the syl- 

 logism of four terms. 



Now it appears to us, that this demand for precise language 

 had been sufficiently ansv/ered in later times by rigorous phy- 

 siologists, as far as the properties which now engage our at- 

 tention are concerned ; and that it was imnecessary, in treatT 

 ing of them, to change the established language. When 

 they say the muscular Jibre is irritable, they mean that it alone 

 has the power of contracting, in consequence of irritation ; 

 when they say the nerve is not irritable, they mean that irri- 



* In Ensjlisli we should here use the active participle sentient, which 

 conveys the precise idea, and avoids the confusion of which M. C. so justly 

 complains. This is an instance of the importance of philological studies, 

 with a view to every object of philosophic inquiry. — Sec Tookc's Divrr- 

 sions (if Piii/ci/, vol. ii. [). 480. — Ejujt. 



tat ion 



