IS INTRODUCTION 



or less flexible fibres or laminBe of which intercept fluids more or less abundant — 

 constitutes what is termed the organization ; and, as a consequence of what we have 

 said, it follows that only organized bodies can enjoy life. 



Organization, then, results from a great number of dispositions or arrangements, 

 which are all conditions of life ; and it is easy to conceive that the general move- 

 ment of the life would be arrested, if its effect be to alter either of these conditions, 

 so as to arrest even one of the partial motions of which it is composed. 



Every organized body, besides the qualities common to its tissue, has one proper 

 form, not only in general and externally, but also in the detail of the structure 

 of each of its parts ; and it is upon this form, which determines the particular direction 

 of each of the partial movements that take place in it, that depends the complication of 

 the general movement of its life, which constitutes its species, and renders it what it 

 is. Each part concurs in this general movement by a peculiar action, and experiences 

 from it particular effects ; so that, in every being, the life is a whole, resulting from 

 the mutual action and reaction of all its parts. 



Life, then, in general, presupposes organization in general, and the life proper 

 to each being presupposes the organization peculiar to that being, just as the 

 movement ot a clock presupposes the clock ; and, accordingly, we behold life only 

 in beings that are organized and formed to enjoy it ; and all the efforts of philo- 

 sophers have not yet been able to discover matter in the act of organization, 

 either of itself or by any extrinsic cause. In fact, life exercising upon the elements 

 which at every instant form part of the living body, and upon those which it attracts 

 to it, an action contrary to that which would be produced without it by the usual 

 chemical affinities, it is inconsistent to suppose that it can itself be produced by these 

 affinities, and yet we know of no other power in nature capable of reuniting previously 

 separated molecules. 



The birth of organized beings is, therefore, the greatest mystery of the organic 

 economy and of all nature : we see them developed, but never being formed ; nay, 

 more, all those of which we can trace the origin, have at first been attached to a 

 body of the same form as their own, but which was developed before them ; — in 

 one word, to a parent. So long as the offspring has no independent life, but par- 

 ticipates in that of its parent, it is called a germ. 



The place to which the germ is attached, and the occasional cause which detaches 

 it, and gives it an independent life, vary ; but the primitive adherence to a similar 

 being is a rule without exception. The separation of the germ is what is designated 

 generation. 



All organized beings produce similar ones ; otherwise, death being a necessary con- 

 sequence of life, their species would not endure. 



Organized beings have even the faculty of reproducing, in degrees varying with the 

 species, certain of their parts of which they may have been deprived. This has been 

 named the power of reproduction. 



The developement of organized beings is more or less rapid, and more or less ex- 

 tended, according as circumstances are differently favourable. Heat, the supply and 

 quality of nourishment, with other causes, exert great influence ; and this influence 

 may extend to the whole body in general, or to certain organs in particular : — hence 

 the similitude of offspring to their parents can never be complete. 



