384 THE UNIVERSE. 



The vegetable circulation has such energy, and the liquid 

 which it bears away is reproduced at such a rate, that Scott 

 assures us that out of certain birch-trees there flows, in 

 spring, a quantity of fluid equal to their weight. 



Looking at results so totally unexpected, we ask what 

 association of mysterious forces produces such phenomena. 

 If the ancients sometimes went astray in exaggerating the 

 faculties of the plant, our epoch has often fallen into the 

 opposite extreme. 



Many modern naturalists, retrograding towards the Carte- 

 sian philosophy, explain the vital actions of the plant only 

 by the intervention of purely physical or chemical forces. 

 According to some, their circulation is merely a matter of 

 capillary attraction, or endosmosis ; according to others, it 

 is a simple fermentation, or a series of electric shocks. 



But one solitary objection, one alone, immediately levels 

 with the dust all these hypotheses which the materialist so 

 zealously takes up. These physico-chemical phenomena are 

 so little the initiatory cause of the circulation that they 

 have never yet proved adequate to reanimate life in a plant 

 which has been killed without changing the tissues ; and if 

 the causes of life were absolutely under the empire of ma- 

 terial forces, the supporters of these strange opinions which 

 are so much in vogue ought to be able to resuscitate dead 

 organisms. 



But we are happy to say that the leading minds in phys- 

 iology have not fallen into the errors we have^ touched 

 upon. 



Our immortal anatomist Bichat did not hesitate in the 

 least on this point ; he set an example to all by attributing 



