THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 93 



stoechiology. Afterward comes the study of anatomical 

 elements, or elementology. These elements, formed by the 

 bringing into contact and the blending cf immediate prin- 

 ciples of the three classes, visible only under the micro- 

 scope, and showing themselves under the form of cells, 

 fibres, and tubes, are endowed, as we have said, with ele- 

 mentary vital properties : nutrition, generation, evolution, 

 contractility, and innervation. The science of the humors, 

 or hygrology, is placed at a higher degree. The organic 

 liquids, in fact, are formed by the dissolving in water of 

 a certain number of immediate principles, and they hold 

 anatomical elements suspended in them. The tissues, the 

 study of which constitutes histology, are more complex. 

 They proceed from the association and intertangling of 

 anatomical elements. With the exception of those that 

 are called products, they all contain several kinds of ana- 

 tomical elements. JEFomceomerology treats of the systems 

 formed by the assembling of parts identical in tissue (the 

 nervous system, the bony system). In the higher degrees 

 comes the study of organs, then that of apparatus. Such 

 is the methodical gradation of the parts, the totality of 

 which is the subject of anatomy. If we add that these 

 parts, which represent the different complications of organ- 

 ized matter, may be studied not only from the anatomical 

 or static point of view strictly so called, but also from 

 the physiological and therapeutic point of view, that is 

 to say, in their course of action and in their relations to 

 the media, we shall have indicated the complete frame of 

 the science. 



This, for Robin and for most biologists, is the general 

 constitution of biology ; but this system is rather a plan and 

 a method than a doctrine. We do not learn by it either 

 what life is in itself, or what notion we must form of the 

 regular succession and the concordant connection of phe- 

 nomena, the dedication of organs to the performance of 



