OF HEALTH AND HUMAN HATURE. 39 



We shall now examine each of these separately, be- 

 ginning with the vital. 



NOTE. 



The consideration of a division as ancient as Aristotle, and 

 preferable to that which Blumenbach adopts, will perhaps form 

 an useful note to the eighty-third paragraph and the greater part 

 of the fourth section. 



In this, the functions are arranged in two classes : — the ani- 

 mal constituting one peculiar to animals ; and the vital and na- 

 tural united into another, common to vegetables and animals, 

 under the title of organic or vital. The generative, relating in 

 their object to the species rather than to the individual, and of 

 but temporary duration, are thrown into a separate and inferior 

 division, but in fact are merely part of the organic. 



We owe the revival of this classification, and our knowledge 

 of the characteristics of each class of functions, to Dr. Wilson 

 Philip * and Xavier Bichat, f although the latter, from having 

 published a work expressly on the subject, has received the whole 

 honour, both in great Britain and on the Continent. 



The animal functions prove us feeling, thinking, and willing 

 beings : they are the actions of the senses which receive impres- 

 sions, of the brain which perceives them, reflects upon them, 

 and wills ; of the voluntary muscles which execute the will in 

 regard to motion ; and of the nerves which are the agents of 

 transmission. The brain is their central organ. The vital or 



* Treatise on Febrile Diseases. Ch. iii. Sect. 3. First Edition. 1799. Paper 

 read to the Royal Med. Society of Edinburgh. 1791 or 1792, and inserted in 

 its Records. Essay on Opium. 1795. Edinburgh Med. and SurgicalJoumal. 

 July. 1809. p. 301 sq. 



■f Richerches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort. 



