16 INTRODUCTION. 



The movement of the liquids requiring also a 

 continued and repeated action on the part of the 

 solids, it is necessary that the latter should be 

 capable of flexibility and dilatability. This like- 

 wise is found to be a general character of such 

 solids. 



This structure common to all living bodies, this 

 porous texture, by which fibres and solid plates 

 more or less flexible intercept liquids more or less 

 abundant, is what is called organisation ; none there- 

 fore but organized bodies are susceptible of life. 

 Organization results, then, from a variety of arrange- 

 ments, which are all of them necessary conditions 

 of life, without which life cannot subsist. If the 

 effect of the vital action be to change either of these 

 conditions, so as to alter but one of those partial 

 movements of which its own totality is composed, 

 the cessation of life must necessarily ensue. 



Every organized body, independently of the com- 

 mon qualities of its texture, has a form peculiar to 

 itself, not only in its general and external struc- 

 ture, but even in the detail of its minutest part. 



different in their properties, characters, and forms of being-, from 

 those solids and liquids which constitute the individual textures, 

 and the component parts of an organized and living body. 



If, therefore, no principle or law from amongst those which 

 always regulate the changes of inanimate nature, can explain these 

 changes to which the elements of organized bodies are subjected, 

 and the various phenomena which such bodies present, we are 

 justified in ascribing these changes and phenomena to a superior 

 or regulating principle or influence, which is manifested to our im- 

 perfect senses and experience only in alliance with material ele- 

 ments, and there chiefly in its effects upon these elements. 



