INTRODUCTION. 7 



fibres and solid laminae, within whose interstices are contained the 

 fluids; it is in these fluids that the motion is most continued and 

 extended. Foreign substances penetrate the body and unite with the 

 fluids ; and whilst they nourish the solids by the interposition of their 

 particles, they also detach from them those that are superfluous. It is in 

 a liquid or gaseous form that the matters to be exhaled traverse the pores 

 of the living body ; but, in return, it is the solids which contain the fluids, 

 and by their contraction communicate to them part of their motion. 



This mutual action of the fluids and solids, this transition of mole- 

 cules, required considerable affinity in their chemical composition; and 

 such is the fact the solids of organised bodies being mostly composed 

 of elements easily convertible into fluids or gases. The motion of the 

 fluids needing also a constantly repeated action on the part of the solids, 

 and communicating one to them, required in the latter both flexibility 

 and dilatability ; and accordingly we find this character nearly general 

 in all organised solids. 



This structure, common to all living bodies this areolar tissue, 

 whose more or less flexible fibres or laminae intercept fluids more or 

 less abundant, constitutes what is called the organisation. As a con- 

 sequence of what we have said, it follows that life can be enjoyed by 

 organised bodies only. 



Organisation, then, results from a great variety of arrangements, 

 which are all conditions of life ; and it is easy to conceive, that if its 

 effect be to alter either of these conditions, so as to arrest even one of 

 the partial motions of which it is composed, the general movement of 

 life must cease. 



Every organised body, independently of the qualities common to its 

 tissue, has a form peculiar to itself, not merely general and external, 

 but extending to the detail of the structure of each of its parts ; and it 

 is upon this form, which determines the particular direction of each of 

 the partial movements that take place in it, that depends the complica- 

 tion of the general movement of its life it constitutes its species and 

 renders it what it is. Each part co-operates in this general movement 

 by a peculiar action, and experiences from it particular effects ; so that 

 in every being life is a whole, resulting from the mutual action and 

 re-action of all its parts. 



Life, then, in general, presupposes organisation in general ; and the 

 life proper to each individual being, presupposes an organisation pecu- 

 liar to that being, just as the movement of a clock presupposes the clock 

 itself ; accordingly we behold life only in beings that are organised 

 and formed to enjoy it, and all the efforts of philosophy have never been 

 able to discover matter in the act of organisation, neither of itself, nor by 



