61 



and consisting merely in assimilation of nutritive molecules, in the nutri- 

 tion absolutely necessary to the preservation of the living being*, who, as 

 his substance is incessantly wasting-, would soon cease to exist, if these 

 continual losses were not always repaired by the act of nutrition. 



Grimaud, Professor of Physiology at Montpellier, too soon lost to the 

 science which he cultivated as a philosopher, truly deserving that name, 

 adopted this simple and luminous division, developed it better than had 

 been done before him, and uniformly followed in his lectures and in his 

 worksf. This division of the functions into internal, which he likewise 

 calls digestive, and into external or loco-motive, lately brought forward 

 under the name of organic and animal, the former of which terms is quite 

 inaccurate and defective, since it leads to a belief, that the animal life, or 

 of relation is not confined to organs, and that their vital instruments are 

 solely employed on internal life or of nutrition (Motus assimilationis, Bacon ; 

 Bias alterativum, VanhelmoLt.) This distinction does not comprehend 

 the whole of the phenomena, and does not embrace the sum of the func- 

 tions which are performed in the animal ceconomy. In fact, there are 

 not found in the two great classes which it establishes, the acts by which 

 animals and vegetables reproduce and perpetuate themselves, and immor- 

 talize the duration of their species. All the functions destined to the pre- 

 servation of the species are not included 5 they merely relate to the func- 

 tions subservient to the preservation of individuals. 



I have, therefore, thought it right to include under two general classes, 

 in the first place, the functions which belong to the preservation of the 

 species, functions without which man might exist, as we see in eunuchs, 

 but without which the human species would soon perish, from a loss 

 of the power of reproduction. In laying down these two great divi- 

 sions, I have merely considered the object and end which each function 

 has to fulfil. 



Among the functions which are employed in the preservation of the 

 individual, some fulfil this office by assimilating to his own Substance 

 the food with which he is nourished ; the others, by establishing, in 

 a manner suited to his existence, his relations with the beings which sur- 

 round him. 



The functions destined to the preservation of the species, may likewise 

 be divided into two classes. Those of the first class require the concourse 

 of two sexes; they constitute generation, properly so called; those of the 

 second order, exclusively belong to the female, who, after conception, is 



* Namanima nutritiva etiam aliis inest, etprima et maxima, commums facuUas animse, 

 secundum quam omnibus vivere inest AIUSTOT. de anim, lib. ii. cap. 4. 



| Ir> his MS. lectures on physiology, he seems to feel a complacency in that division 

 which he had in a manner appropriated to himself, by his happy illustrations of it, and 

 by the changes which he had introduced into it. In every lecture, I might almost say 

 in every page, he returns to this division, explains it, dilates, and comments upon it. 

 The functions," says he, " may be divided into two great classes ; some are formed in 

 the interior of the body, and exclusively belong 1 to it ; others take place outwardly, and 

 belong to external objects," &c. The digestive power presides, in his opinion, over 

 the internal fw-ctions,\\hose object is nutrition: the loco-motive power directs the ex- 

 ternal functions. " ft is by means of the organs of sense that the animal enlarges 

 his existence, that he applies and distributes it on the surrounding objects, that he takes 

 cognizance of the qualities in those objects which concern him ; it is by means of the 

 muscles essentially obedient to the organs of sense, that lie adapts himself to those ob- 

 jects, that he places himself in a manner suited to the mode of tbeir activity," &c. 

 Jluthor's Note. 



