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with circumstances which render them very remarkable, 

 strike us but slightly when compared with what we ob- 

 serve analogous in polypuses, and other insects that mul- 

 tiply by slips. The motions we perceive in certain parts 

 of great animals, when separated from the body, or after 

 the death of the animal, affect us only with a slender 

 degree of surprise, when we consider the motions of 

 different parts of worms, or those of some millepedes. 



But may there not be some misconception in these 

 different judgments? We judge of the effect produced, 

 as considered in itself, and separate from the circum- 

 stances accompanying it ; whereas we should judge of it 

 with relation to the greater or less degree of composi- 

 tion whereof the body, in which this effect is produced, 

 consists. There is as much, and indeed more to be ad- 

 mired in the consolidation of certain wounds, or in the 

 reunion of certain fractures of our body, than there is 

 in the consolidation of the wounds of polypuses, or in 

 the reunion of parts which have been separated from 

 them. A very simple machine is easily repaired; a 

 machine that is extremely compounded, cannot be re- 

 paired with the same facility. When we reflect on the 

 prodigious number of similar and dissimilar parts con- 

 tained in the composition of the bodies of great animals, 

 and particularly in that of the human body ; when we 

 attend to the strict connexion of all these parts, and to the 

 degrees of composition in each of them, we cannot suf- 

 ficiently wonder that the various accidents which happen 

 to these bodies are not attended with greater conse- 

 quences; we shall at the same time perceive the reason 

 why they are not enabled to propagate like bodies whose 

 organization is more simple. 



But independently of the greater or less degree of the 

 composition of parts necessary to life, as soon as these 

 parts are found placed in different regions of a body, 

 and are not dispersed throughout its whole length, such a 

 body cannot be multiplied by slips. The AUTHOR OF 

 NATURE, by denying, in his wisdom, this property to 

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