4 ASSIMILATION THE RESULT 



influences, just because the animal body can pro- 

 duce within itself that source of motion which is 

 indispensable to the vital process. 



Assimilation, or the process of formation and 

 growth in other words, the passage of matter from 

 a state of motion to that of rest goes on in the 

 same way in animals and in vegetables. In both, 

 the same cause determines the increase of mass. 

 This constitutes the true vegetative life, which is 

 carried on without consciousness. 



The activity of vegetative life manifests itself, 

 in vegetables, with the aid of external influences ; 

 in animals, by means of influences produced within 

 their organism. Digestion, circulation, secretion, 

 are no doubt under the influence of the nervous 

 system ; but the force which gives to the germ, the 

 leaf, and the radical fibres of the vegetable the 

 same wonderful properties, is the same as that 

 residing in the secreting membranes and glands of 

 animals, and which enables every animal organ to 

 perform its own proper function. It is only the 

 source of motion that differs in the tw r o great classes 

 of organised beings. 



While the organs of the vital motions are never 

 wanting in the lowest orders of animals, as in the im- 

 pregnated germ of the ovum, in which they are deve- 

 loped first of all, we find, in the higher orders of ani- 

 mals, peculiar organs of feeling and sensation, of con- 

 sciousness and of a higher intellectual existence. 



Pathology informs us that the true vegetative life 



