2 The Chemical Statics of Organised Beings. 



which our recollections, our presentiments, perhaps, so often 

 make us consider as too narrow a prison. To others more 

 fortunate belongs the care of initiating you in these important 

 studies, the privilege of unfolding to you these lofty themes; 

 our task, more humble, must be limited to the field of the phy- 

 sical phenomena of life; and there are still some which have 

 not found a place in our lectures. 



It is specially, indeed, the functions of matter in the pro- 

 duction and growth of organised beings, the part which it takes 

 in the accomplishment of the phenomena of their daily ex- 

 istence, the alterations which it undergoes after their death, that 

 we have had to study together, and this study alone has quite 

 sufficed us for this year's occupation. 



I. Plants, animals, man, contain matter. Whence comes it ? 

 What -does it effect in their tissues and in the fluids which bathe 

 them ? What becomes of it when death breaks the bonds by 

 which its different parts were so closely united. 



These are the questions which we touched upon together, 

 at first with hesitation, for the problem might be far above the 

 powers of modern chemistry ; we afterwards considered them 

 with somewhat more confidence, as we felt from the silent and 

 inward assent of our understandings that the path was sure, and 

 that we could descry the goal gradually standing out, clear of 

 all that obstructed our vision. If from these labours, which 

 you have witnessed, or I should rather say, in which you have 

 taken part ; if from this scientific effort there have arisen some 

 general views, some simple formulas, it is my duty to become 

 their historian ; but allow me the pleasure of adding, that they 

 belong to you, that they belong to our school, the intelligence 

 of which has been exercised on this new ground. It is the 

 ardour with which you have followed me in this career that has 

 given me strength to pursue it ; it is your interest which has 

 sustained me ; your curiosity which has awakened mine ; your 

 confidence which has made me see, and which proves to me at 

 this moment that we are still in the path of truth. 



These remarks will remind you of the wonder with which we 

 found, that, of the numerous elements of modern chemistry, 

 organic nature borrows but a very small number; that from 

 these vegetable or animal matters, now multiplied to infinity, 

 general physiology borrows not more than from ten to twelve 

 species ; and that all the phenomena of life, so complicated in 

 appearance, belong, essentially, to a general formula so simple, 

 that, so to speak, in a few words the whole is stated, the whole 

 summed up, the whole foreseen. 



Have we not proved, in fact, by a multitude of results, that 

 animals constitute, in a chemical point of view, a real apparatus 

 for combustion, by means of which burnt carbon incessantly 



