190 BIOLOGY. 



by maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and 

 the moisture is stocked with infusoria. 



941. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division of 

 organisms into infusoria, a reduction of the higher to 

 the primary, life. 



942. Organisms are a synthesis of infusoria. Their 

 generation is none other than an accumulation of infinitely 

 numerous mucous points, infusoria. In these the 

 organisms have not forsooth been at once wholly and 

 perfectly depicted as on the smallest scale, nor contained 

 in a state of preformation ; but they are only infusorial 

 vesicles, that by different combinations assume different 

 forms, and grow up into higher organisms. 



THEORY OF GENERATION. 



943. The theory of generation is in this sense a syn- 

 thetical and epigenetic, not an analytic. 



944. The theory of preformation contradicts the laws 

 of nature's developement. 



945. Generation is a successive formation, both in 

 relation to the quantity as well as the quality, and the 

 specific organs. It having been preposited, that an 

 organism has several organic systems, so must these 

 range according to their importance, and like the systems 

 of nature, behind each other, and be also developed in 

 this order. As the whole of nature has been a succes- 

 sive fixation of aether, so is the organic world a successive 

 fixation of infusorial mucus-vesicles. The mucus is the 

 aether, the jchaos for the organic world. The semen of ah 1 

 animals consists also of infusoria ; the same may be said 

 of the vitellus. The pollen of flowers consists in like 

 manner of microscopic vesicles with globules, which have 

 a life of their own and move themselves in water. Many 

 confervas indeed divide evidently into a multitude of 

 living, self-moving globules, which, after they have 

 swam about for some time, again unite to form a stem of 

 conferva. 



946. Every generation consequently commences a 

 priori or from the beginning. The organic substance 



