236 Atiempt to systematizxe [Ocr. 
two out of it; and has accordingly two muscular and two nervous 
systems! He has a particular system for cartilages, another for 
tendons and ligaments, and a ¢hird, which holds a middle sort of 
place between these two! He has not merely a system for the 
bones themselves, but a synovial system at their extremities, and a 
medullary system within them! He has a pilous or hairy system on 
the surface of the body, a dermal or skinny system, and an epi- 
dermal or scarp-skin system! Curiously enough this last of his 
organic systems is an inorganic substance, destined to preserve 
organic parts from the immediate contact of external objects: it 
possesses neither life nor sensibility; and he might as well have 
ranked among the number of his organic systems the layer of paint 
which covers the skin and envelopes all the systems of the native 
American. 
Unsatisfied, however, with his imaginary simple systems, Bichat 
has created as many simple functions, His animal life and organic 
life, animal sensibility and organic sensibility, animal contractility, 
organic sensible contractility, organic insensible contractility, and a 
multitude of others, will satisfy those who believe in them that they 
who ascribe nine lives to some of the feline genus have only fallen 
short, instead of exceeding the number; and will to others atford 
only another proof that confusion and error never yet were sepa- 
rated. 
Respecting his plan, I have only to add, that his Anatomie Gé- 
nérale presents the most signal abandonment of nature, and of its 
best characteristics—simplicity and intelligibility. If Kant had 
wished to do for physiology the same sort of service he has done for 
metaphysics, he could not have done it more completely than M. 
Bichat, who has so nicely perplexed the science as often to alarm 
the young for their own incapacity, and to satisfy the old of its 
author’s. 
eT 
One of the most striking ill consequences of this want of arrange-- 
ment is the difficulty which not only the student, but even the ex- 
perienced anatomist, feels, of obtaining forchimself, or communi- 
cating to another, any short and simple notion of the animal organs 
and functions. 
A simple notion of a complex subject can be obtained or commu- 
nicated only by means of generalization ; and if this be abandoned, 
it cannot be obtained or communicated at all. In anatomy and 
physiology such generalization is not even attempted ; the organs and 
functions are enumerated in an insulated, irregular and disorderly, 
manner; and neither the person who makes the enumeration, nor 
he who hears it, is often satisfied that he has enumerated the whole. 
If an anatomist be asked to give a short account of the structure 
of the body by enumerating its various organs, he tells you that it 
consists of bones, and muscles, and ligaments, and arteries, and 
veins, and nerves, and glands, and a brain, and organs of sense, (not 
