ORGANIZATION. 21 



instead of separating while the offspring is in the embryo or infan- 

 tile state. 



14. Specks, This succession of individuals, each deriving its 

 existence with all its peculiarities from a similar antecedent living 

 body, and transmitting it with its peculiarities essentially unchanged 

 from generation to generation, gives the idea of species ; a term 

 which essentially belongs to organic nature, and which is applica- 

 ble only by a figure of speech to inorganic things. By species we 

 mean the type or original of each sort of plant, or animal, thus rep- 

 resented in time by a perennial succession of like individuals : or, 

 if it be preferred, the species is the sum of such individuals. 



15. Life, All these peculiarities of organized, as contrasted 

 with inorganic bodies, will be seen to depend upon this ; that the 

 former are living beings or their products. The great character- 

 istic of plants and animals is life, which these beings enjoy, but 

 minerals do not. What is the essential nature of the vitality 

 which so controls the matter it becomes connected with, and what 

 is the nature of the connection between the living principle and the 

 organized structure, we are wholly ignorant. We know nothing 

 of life except by the phenomena it manifests in organized struc- 

 tures. We have adverted only to some of the most universal of 

 these phenomena, those which are common to every kind of organ- 

 ized being. But these are so essentially different from the mani- 

 festations of any recognized physical force, that we are compelled 

 to attribute them to a special, superphysical principle. As we 

 rise in the scale of organized structure through the different grades 

 of the animal creation, the superadded vital manifestations become 

 more and more striking and peculiar. But the fundamental char- 

 acteristics of living beings, those which all enjoy in common, and 

 which necessarily give rise to all the peculiarities above enumer- 

 ated (12), are reducible to two; namely, 1. the power of self- 

 support, or assimilation, that of nourishing themselves by involv- 

 ing surrounding mineral matter and converting it into their own 

 proper substance ; by which individuals increase in bulk, or grow, 

 and maintain their life : 2. the power of self-division or repro- 

 duction, by which they increase in numbers and perpetuate the 

 species.* 



* A single striking illustration may set both points in a strong light. The 

 larva of the flesh-fly possesses such power of assimilation, that it will increase 



