13 



have a natural tendency to a common object, the preservation of the in- 

 dividual and of the species: each of the organs, though provided for a 

 peculiar action, concurs in this object;- and life in general, or life proper- 

 ly so called, is the result of that series of concurring and harmonic actions. 

 On the contrary, each part of an inorganic mass is independent of the 

 other parts, to which it is united, only by the force or affinity of aggrega- 

 tion. When such a part is separated from the rest, it maintains all its 

 characteristic properties, and differs only by its size from the mass to 

 which it belongs. 



Among animals and vegetables, all the individuals of the same class 

 appear to have been formed after the same model; their parts are equas 

 in number, and resemble each other in colour; their differences are slight 

 and evanescent. The forms peculiar to organized beings are therefore 

 invariably determined, and when nature departs from them, she never 

 does so, to such a degree, as in the shapes of minerals. The veins of 

 mines are never precisely alike, as the leaves of vegetables or the limbs 

 of animals. Crystals formed from similar substances, assume very dif- 

 ferent shapes, equally distinct and precise. Carbonate of lime, for ex- 

 ample, assumes according to circximstances the shape of a rhomboid, that 

 of a six-sided regular prism, that of a solid, terminated by twelve scalene 

 triangles, that of a different dodecahedron with pentagonal faces, S&c. as 

 may be seen at large in the writings of Hiiuy. 



A powerful inward cause seems to arrange the constituent parts of ani- 

 mal and vegetable bodies, by a determinate rule, in such a manner that 

 they present a surface, more or less completely rounded. Minerals often 

 take their form from external bodies, and when an especial force assigns 

 it to them, as in crystals, their surfaces are flat and angular. When the 

 crystallization is disturbed, and the molecules of the crystals are driven 

 tumultuously together, the geometrical form is impaired, the parts are 

 rounded which would have been terminated by angles, if a slow and tran- 

 quil crystallization had allowed of regular aggregation; and as Hauy 

 has remarked, these waving outlines, these roundings, so frequent in ve- 

 getables and plants, where they belong to beauty of form, are, in mine- 

 rals, indication of defects. True beauty, in these beings, is characterized 

 by the straight line, and it is on good grounds that Rome de Lisle* has 

 said of this sort of line, that it seems to have an especial determination 

 to the mineral kingdom. 



Amongst all the characteristics which distinguish the two great divi- 

 sions of natural bodies, the most absolute, and the most palpable, is that: 

 which is drawn from the manner of growth and of nourishment. Inor- 

 ganic bodies grow only by accretion, that is, by the accession of new lay- 

 ers to their surface, whilst the organic, in virtue of its vital powers, re- 

 ceives into intimate combination, and is penetrated and pervaded, by the 

 substance it assimilates to itself. In animals and plants, nutrition is the 

 effect of an internal mechanism : their growth is a developement from 

 within. In minerals, on the contrary, growth cannot claim the name of 

 developement: it goes on externally, by successive addition of new lay- 

 ers; it is the same being, assuming other dimensions, whilst the organic 

 body is renewed in its growthf. 



* Christallographie. Tom. I. p. 94. 



f The organic body, is " renewed" by the absorption of the old and the deposition of 

 new matter, while the inorganic always retains the same matter internally, and only 

 grows externally, by superposition. Godman. 



