4 ASSIMILATION THE RESULT 



because the animal body can produce 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 con- 

 sciousness. 



The activity of vegetative life manifests itself, in 

 vegetables, with the aid of external influences ; in ani- 

 mals, 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 rad- 

 ical fibres of the vegetable the same wonderful proper- 

 ties, is the same as that residing in the secreting mem- 

 branes 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 two great 

 classes of organized 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 devel- 

 oped 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 is 

 in no way dependent on the presence of this apparatus ; 



