80 PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 



feeling, in insects. I say the feeling, not the touch ; 

 for the touch seems, as it were, a supervention to the 

 feeling, a perfection given to it by the reaction of the 

 higher powers. As the feeling of the insect, in subtlety 

 and virtual distance, rises above the solitary sense of taste 1 

 in the mollusca, so does the smell of the fish rise above 

 the feeling of the insect. In the fish, likewise, the eyes 

 are single and moveable, while it is remarkable that the 

 only insect that possesses this latter privilege, is an inha- 

 bitant of the waters. Finally, here first, unequivocally, 

 and on a large scale, (for I pretend not to control the 

 freedom, in which the necessity of Nature is rooted, by the 

 precise limits of a system,) here first, Nature exhibits, 

 in the power of sensibility, the consummation of those 

 vital forms (the nisus formativi) the adequate and the sole 

 measure of which is to be sought for in their several or- 

 ganic products. But as if a weakness of exhaustion had 

 attended this advance in the same moment it was made, 

 Nature seems necessitated to fall back, and re-exert her- 

 self on the lower ground which she had before occupied, 

 that of the vital magnetism, or the power of reproduction. 

 The intensity of this latter power in the fishes, is shown 

 both in their voracity and in the number of their eggs, 

 which we are obliged to calculate by weighty not by tale. 

 There is an equal intensity both of the immanent and the 

 protective reproduction, in which, if we take in the com- 

 parative number of individuals in each species, and likewise 



1 The remark on the feeling of the antennae, compared with the touch of 

 man, or even of the half-reasoning elephant, is yet more applicable to the 

 taste, which in these gelatinous animals might, perhaps not inappropriately, 

 be entitled the gastric sense. 



