ANIMAL GRAFTS AND REGENERATIONS. 251 



of it. The fact is, that species heretofore have been sub- 

 jected only to the action of Nature's spontaneous influences 5 

 and of the arts of zootechny ; but that which forces of this 

 kind were powerless to effect yesterday might very well be 

 accomplished to-morrow by the powers which the physiolo- 

 gist now has at his disposal. By directing action to the 

 eggs, as Claude Bernard suggests, that is, to the living 

 germs, we gain a far more powerful and solid grasp on the 

 remote plans of life. The embryo, that faint and indefinite 

 sketch of the future being, that microcosm in which the 

 silent forces of vitality slowly possess themselves of a soft 

 pulp, sensitive to the slightest disturbances, is not forced 

 to unfold itself in accordance with any unbending law : 

 Robin has demonstrated this. 1 It might then be possible 

 to occasion, in the embryo of an animal, modifications com- 

 patible with life, to maintain these in the animal once formed, 

 to repeat and multiply them gradually upon the products 

 of following generations, so as to fix them definitely by 

 means of heredity. Some experiments made in this direc- 

 tion, among others those of Dareste, Brown - S6quard, 

 Trcul, etc., are highly promising; but the subject, we 

 easily see, requires the diligent cooperative labor of many 

 lives of men. It is in this way that the philosopher will be 

 able to disturb the mechanism of things, and invert the 

 course of natural transmutations. He will impose his own 

 will on the forces of the universe. Whenever he is shat- 

 tered by them, they know nothing of it ; when he subdues 

 them, it is with absolute knowledge of what he is doing. 



These corpuscles themselves, these ultimate monads in 

 which life dwells, may we not regard them in their turn as 

 being susceptible to the action of inward modifications, and 

 capable of displaying new properties ? It is very interest- 

 ing to remark that the same anatomical element shows 



1 See his remarkable work on the "Appropriation of Organic Parts," 

 1869. 



