MEMOIR OF MAGENDIE. 103 



Bichat had exaggerated the part played by the vital properties ; M. Magendie 

 exaggerates, in turn, the part played by iha physical 2)roperties.'^ Their oppo- 

 sition has rendered both more useful ; it is only by multiplying special points 

 of view that we arrive at a view of the whole. 



Through a profound alliance, which forms the nodus of life, everything in our 

 organism concurs : the physicMl forces like the vital. And even these two 

 orders of forces do not rtpresent the man in his completeness ; above the vital 

 forces preside the psychical or intellectual forces. Sensibility is not a physical 

 force, nor is thought a vital force. 



As there is a superior philosophy, so there are commodious philosophies. I 

 call commodious^and without allusion to M. Magendie, who belonged to nonet — 

 all philosophy which breaks its subject to pieces and takes a fragment for the 

 whole. The superior and true philosophy embraces the complex being, and, 

 in that complex being, arrives at unity, not by the arbitrary exclusion of such 

 or such parts, but by a clear and distinct view of the precise function of each. 



M. Magendie would, for his part, have said with Pascal, though Avith less 

 profound meaning: " We do not think the whole of philosophy worth an hour's 

 trouble." His vocation did not lie therein, but was that of a great experiment- 

 alist. Having received from Bichat the torch of experimental art, he bore it 

 with a steady hand for forty years ; indefatigable in labor, bold in exploration, 

 making no account of any sect, neither of materialism nor of vitalism, incapable 

 of the spirit of sectarism, he sought truth with entire independence. This 

 emancipated reason of his was his distinctive stamp, securing him the esteem 



* One of the points, of this kind, in which he has indulged the greatest exaggeration, is 

 that whioh regards absorption ; this he reduces to imbibition ; but even here ^e exaggeration 

 consists rather in the expressions than in the fundamental idea. He calls absorption a 

 wholly physical phenomenon, and in this he is mistaken ; there is but one thing purely physi- 

 cal about it, namely, the imbibition. 



He very properly says: " Now, we all know that every substance, whether acid or alka- 

 line, wholesome or deleterious, is absorbed as soon as it is placed in contact with our tissues. 

 There is herein nothing but a phenomenon of imbibition, and all that has been said of the 

 intelligence of the pores is only a romance at present out of date." What he adds touching 

 the different functions of the veins and lymphatic vessels in absorption is also very just: 

 "No doubt the lymphatic vessels can absorb, since their walls, like those of the veins, are 

 porous and susceptible of being imbibed with the liquids with which they happen to be in 

 contact. Recall now the division which we have established in the mechanism of absorption. 

 We there see two phenomena entirely distinct: on one hand, a local imbibition of the liquid ; 

 on the other, a transfer of the liquid imbibed into the current of the circulation. The former 

 property is common to the two orders of vessels ; but, as regards the second, do we find 

 united in each the conditions necessary for its being effected? I have satisfied myself that, 

 in most circumstances, the lymphatic vessels are not filled with liquid, nor traversed by an 

 interior current ; hence, most frequently they are not, they cannot be agents of absorption. 

 The veins, on the contrary, destined to convey without cessation the blood from the periphery 

 to the centre, must, by just right, be considered as the habitual channels by which the liquids 

 are absorbed." (Lei^ons sur (es phenomen. physig. de la vie, t. i.) 



t It is very true that he would willingly have explained everything by physical forces, if 

 he could ; but he clearly distinguished in the living organism the physical from the vital. 

 And who could confound them? The art is in separating them. "Begin always," he says, 

 " by analyzing the phenomena, by isolating what is physical from what is vital." (Lcqons 

 sur le syst. nerv., I, p. 4.) " I distinguish, in vitality, two great classes of phenomena: the 

 one comTpvises physical phenomena, the other iiital phenomena.^^ (Lcq. surles phen. phys.de la 

 vie, t. II, p. 14.) " Far be it from me," he further says, " to exaggerate the importance of 

 physical explanations. Thus, why is it that, under the influence of a moral emotion, more 

 or less vivid, we see the face redden or grow pale? There is here something peculiar, 

 something which belongs not to the domain of physics." (Ibid., t. I, p. 202.) Elsewhere 

 Le says : " To seek to explain a physical phenomenon by vital laws, only because that phe- 

 nomenon occurs in a living body, is an idea quite as irrational as to speak of vitality in ref- 

 erence to an inorganic body." ( Lcq. sur le syst. nerv., I, p. 3.) Finally, his conclusion 

 thereupon is that "Physical laws lose nothing of their authority for being exercised in 

 organized bodies. Observers only have been wanting to follow them into this living world, 

 this microcosm of the ancients. Each function, each organ would easily furnish us the proof 

 of it; and is it not, of itself, exhibited in the senses, the movements, the voice, the circulation 

 ■of the blood, &c.V' (Leg. sur les phen. phys. dc la vie, t. I, p. 310.) 



