ANIMAL. 



119 



stances,* besides the imponderables light, 

 caloric, and electricity. The whole of these 

 are met with in the mineral or inorganic world; 

 but no more than nineteen of them have been 

 detected in the constitution of organized bo- 

 dies.f Six of this number, indeed, oxygen, 

 hydrogen, carbon, azote, phosphorus, and cal- 

 cium, occur in such abundance as to compose 

 almost the whole mass of organized bodies ; 

 the remaining thirteen are met with but spa- 

 ringly distributed, and some of them even 

 appear to be adventitious, and by no means 

 essential to the constitution of the bodies in 

 which they are encountered. 



Speaking generally, the chemical composi- 

 tion of inorganic objects may be stated to be 

 the more simple, many of them consisting of 

 a single element only, and when more com- 

 pound generally presenting binary, and at 

 most ternary combinations of known elements. 

 Organized bodies, on the other hand, are never 

 made up of single elements, they are not even 

 binary combinations, vegetables in the aggre- 

 gate being at least ternary, and animals at 

 least quaternary compounds. Though the 

 elements which compose inanimate objects, 

 therefore, are more numerous, the combinations 

 they enter into are less complex than those they 

 form in the constitution of living things. 



Another difference in the chemical consti- 

 tution of unorganized and of organized bodies 

 consists in the mode or form in which the che- 

 mical elements exist in each. In the former 

 they present themselves immediately as it were, 

 the chemist in his analyses coming upon them 

 at once ; in the latter they occur under two 

 forms, the one immediate as in minerals, the 

 other mediate, or arranged under a variety of 

 new and peculiar shapes, which, with reference 

 to the bodies they mainly constitute, are con- 

 veniently and fairly spoken of as elements, 

 with the prefix organic, they being exclusively 

 the products of life and organization ; these 

 are also frequently spoken of as the immediate 

 principles of vegetables and animals. 

 . In the inorganic world, again, the con- 

 stituent elements of bodies are always united 

 by virtue of, and in harmony with, the general 

 laws of chemical affinity, whilst in the organic 

 the compounds formed are very often even 

 the opposites of those that would have been 

 originated under the dominion of these laws. 

 From this it comes that, whilst the chemist 

 finds almost as little difficulty in recomposing 



* Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, sul- 

 phur, borium, silenium, iodine, fluor, chlorine, 

 bromine, azote, silicium, zirconium, aluminium, 

 yttrium, glucynium, magnesium, calcium, stron- 

 tium, baryum, potassium, sodium, lithium, man- 

 ganese, zinc, iron, tin, arsenic, molybdenum, tung- 

 sten, columbium, chromium, antimony, ciranium, 

 cerium, cobalt, titanium, bismuth, cadmium, cop- 

 per, tellurium, lead, mercury, nickel, osmium, 

 silver, gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, and 

 iridium. 



t Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, azote, phosphorus, 

 sulphur, iodine, bromine, chlorine, floor, silicium, 

 aluminium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, cal- 

 cium, manganese, iron, and copper. 



as in disintegrating inorganic objects, he has 

 hitherto failed in compounding any one of the 

 higher organic products or immediate prin- 

 ciples of plants and animals.* Chemical 

 analysis we may therefore imagine to be a 

 process of a very different nature as applied 

 to inorganic objects from what it is when ap- 

 plied to organic substances. With reference 

 to the former it signifies a simple disintegra- 

 tion, vvitli an inherent capacity in the elements 

 separated to reunite into the compound ana- 

 lysed ; in the latter it constantly implies de- 

 struction, without any such continuing power 

 of recombination among the constituent ele- 

 ments. Chemical synthesis, consequently, is 

 an expression that can only be logically used 

 in connection with inorganic objects. 



Considered with reference to their intimate 

 texture, organized beings are no less strikingly 

 different from unorganized bodies. The last 

 are either solid, or fluid, or gaseous ; they never 

 occur commingled, each subserving the ex- 

 istence of the other. The water of crystalli- 

 zation, and the globules of this and other fluids 

 occasionally found included within the sub- 

 stance of minerals, are but adventitious, being 

 in the first instance entangled among their 

 component molecules, in the second imprisoned 

 within accidental cavities in their substances 

 but contributing in nowise to the existence 

 or duration of the matter that surrounds them. 

 Organized bodies, on the other hand, consist 

 uniformly of solid and of fluid parts : whilst 

 the vegetable has its woody fibre and constituent 

 parenchyma, it has its sap also ; and animals 

 with their firmer bones, muscles, cellular sub- 

 stance, &c. have likewise blood circulating 

 through their bodies, or various fluids de- 

 posited within their tissues, which are just as 

 essential to their constitution and continuance 

 as the containing parts themselves. It is even 

 by the mutual play of the solids and fluids 

 which enter into the composition of organized 

 beings that they manifest themselves in action 

 or exhibit the phenomena which are peculiar 

 to them, and which we denominate vital. It 

 were indifferent whether we took away the 

 solids (were such a thing possible) or the 

 fluids of a vegetable or an animal ; in either 

 case it must perish. The solids and fluids of 

 organized beings consequently are in intimate 

 and inseparable relationship one with another. 

 Consistence. From this admixture of solids 

 and fluids in the world of organization results 

 the variety of consistence which its objects pre- 

 sent. In the inorganic kingdom, rigidity, 

 rigidity, too, which is uniform, is one of the 

 distinguishing characteristics. In the organic, 

 on the contrary, pliancy and softness, which 

 vary as well in every individual as in almost 



* The exceptions to this position are scarcely 

 worth noticing one or two of the more simple 

 organic elements, oxalic acid and urea, for ex- 

 ample, have been formed synthetically, and a 

 substance bearing a remote affinity to fat has also 

 been produced. No one, however, has ever suc- 

 ceeded in forming fibrinc, neurine, fecula, gum, 

 &c. synthetically. 



