171 



SECTION II. 



ON THE PREPARATORY ORGANS. 

 CHAP. I. General Relation* of Preparatory Organs. 



1. BY the preparatory organs are meant those whose 

 business it is to make biood: they are well known as consisting of 

 tlie abdominal viscera and the lungs. But of the share taken by 

 each in this process we are but indifferently informed. I shall, in 

 their proper place, offer a few indications upon them respectively. 



2. By the function of the stomach, food is made chyle: this is 

 the effect of the function ; but of the function itself, docs it reside 

 wholly, or partially, in the stomach? if partially, on what other 

 seats has it a dependence? and what is that in which its own 

 principle is deficient? These questions certainly cannot be all 

 answered at once, and some of them perhaps not at all. 



3. The life of perhaps every part, but certainly of most parts, 

 is of two kinds, viz. regular or independent, and occasional or de^ 

 pendent. That which I call regular is made up of those properties 

 which, separated originally from the entire spirit of the ovum, and 

 becoming diffused according to the laws of properties (elaborately 

 spoken of in the chapters on the Ovum), develop, or form, or per- 

 manently influence, those which become their respective seats. The 

 occasional life is that to which properties are communicated from 

 another seat, modifying the regular life. The regular life is capa- 

 ble of maintaining itself by assimilation, and of preserving also the 

 existence of the textures which it before formed. The occasional 

 is not an assimilating life, because the properties which make it 

 occasional endure no longer than a communication is preserved with 

 their source. 



4. These two spirits just mentioned (c&teris paribus) act when 

 they are present ; the regular is always present, and always main- 



