FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 261 



tion clearly depend on this : that, in the former, the phe- 

 nomenon is subjected to the conditions and vital progress 

 of those organized corpuscles which elaborate the ferment 

 within the substance of the fermentable liquids, while, in 

 the latter, the phenomenon is brought about by a ferment 

 already formed and prepared. But this latter ferment is no 

 less of organic origin ; it, too, arises from living beings, 

 animal or vegetable. Whether it emanates, like diastase, 

 from the young cells of the seed, or results, like pepsin, 

 from work done in the digestive apparatus, it is the labor 

 of life, just as much as if it had been completed by globules 

 of yeast or bundles of bacteria. Thus the efficient sources 

 of all fermentations are the same. All ferments are at bot- 

 tom alike, whether procured directly for the fermentable 

 liquid by microscopic bodies inhabiting it, or emanating 

 from corpuscles that inhabit elsewhere. The true doctrine 

 of fermentations consists in this point. 



Henceforth, then, we may consider ferments as products 

 of a fecundation taking place in cells, as secretions elabo- 

 rated by those myriads of infinitely little corpuscles, some 

 crowded, squeezed, condensed, into the palpable organs of 

 animals and plants others free and moving, disseminated, 

 as we shall see, into vast, intangible space. The energy 

 which distinguishes these microscopic animal and vegeta- 

 ble growths also belongs to the microscopic elements mak- 

 ing up the living tissues in the higher animals. We must 

 give to this property, hitherto considered as special, the 

 high dignity of a fundamental and universal attribute of 

 organized cells. We must detect, in the most complex 

 conversions and processes of nutrition in superior beings, 

 the same untiring and primitive force that marks the sub- 

 tile action of invisible and insignificant monads. 



No doubt, the corpuscles of different species to which, 

 in the last analysis, we reduce animals and plants of every 

 kind and degree are not identical. Each species has its 



