OF THE ORGANISM. 95 



JBichal and Richerand, consists in classing the functions in 

 those of the species and in those of the individual, and these 

 latter, in functions of relations or animal functions, and in 

 those of nutrition or organic functions, 



98. The following is a very natural order, in which the 

 functions may be classed. Some are common to all organized 

 bodies, vegetable as well as animal; if not by all their actions, 

 and all their organs, at least by the result. These are the 

 common, organic, or vegetative functions. 1st, nutrition, 

 which comprehends, digestion, absorption, circulation, respi- 

 ration, and the secretions, and whose definite result is the per- 

 petuating the individual in its form, composition, and tempera- 

 ture; 2d, generation, which comprehends the formation of 

 germs, that of the sperm, fecundation, and the development of 

 the fecundated germ, and whose result is the perpetuity of the 

 species, or of a succession of similar individuals. The other 

 functions are proper to animals; they are: 3d, the muscular ac- 

 tion whose results are locomotion, gesture, and voice, and 

 moreover, the muscular movements necessary to the execu- 

 tion of the two preceding functions; 4th, the sensations, and 

 5th, the nervous action or innervation. There is yet another 

 order of functions, belonging exclusively to man, viz. the in- 

 tellectual, which, in other animals, that most resemble him, 

 exists only in appearance. Finally, man not only exercises 

 his individual functions, and those of generation, but, living in 

 society, he exercises collective actions, whose observation and 

 bearing are foreign to physiology and medicine. 



99. While bodies are at rest, we perceive nothing but the 

 qualities by which they strike our senses. While in action or 

 motion, we can still only perceive phenomena, or changes per- 

 ceptible to our senses. Among these qualities and phenomena, 

 some are common to all bodies, others are peculiar to organized 

 and living ones; these last have their peculiar qualities and 

 phenomena, in a word, their properties. Properties, are in 

 fact, nothing else than sensible qualities and phenomena. When 

 the latter reproduce themselves in an order, all of whose con- 

 ditions we can determine, we know the law of such pheno- 

 mena, that is to say, the rule they follow, and to which, it ap- 

 14 



