248 NATURE AND LIFE. 



cellular layer (Malpighi's layer) on which it directly rests, 

 and this condition is essential, because the Malpighi cells 

 seem to be the seat of that formative elaboration which ef- 

 fects the adhesion of the graft. Since Reverdin's experi- 

 ments, some surgeons have attempted to transfer the whole 

 complete skin, instead of the epidermis. Oilier has tried 

 to graft large cutaneous strips, comprising the whole 

 thickness of the skin. The chances of success by this pro- 

 cess seem to be much slighter, and nothing as yet encour- 

 ages us to regard cutaneous grafting, properly so called, as 

 a fortunate operation. 



in. 



These grafts, in which we see an organized portion, 

 severed for a time from the individual whole to which it 

 belongs, retain the springs of life and regain its functions 

 when it is transplanted to another individual even of a dif- 

 ferent species; these regenerations, in which we see de- 

 stroyed organs grow again with their original forms and 

 their properties, living fragments reproducing a whole com- 

 plete being are facts of a kind to yield us, if suitably ex- 

 amined, valuable knowledge as to the essence of vitality it- 

 self. They prove that it does not depend on an indivisible 

 spirit animating the body (mens agitat molem), but on an 

 activity distributed among the minute particles that make 

 it up, consubstantial with these particles, and as variable 

 in its characteristics as they themselves are in their struct- 

 ure ; in other words, the total life of the individual is but 

 the sum, the resultant, of the lives peculiar to each anatom- 

 ical element, the harmonious union of the simultaneous 

 working of myriads of monads the monads of Leibnitz 

 gifted with life in different degrees, from the bony cell, al- 

 most inert and mineral, to the nerve-cell in which a strong 

 and fine fire burns unceasingly. 



Every one of these living corpuscles is a complete whole, 



