INTRODUCTION. 21 



vincing proof that it cannot be itself the result of 

 any such affinities, and we are nevertheless igno- 

 rant of any other created power in nature capable 

 of uniting particles which before were separate *. 



The birth of organized beings is the greatest 

 mystery of organic economy, and indeed of all 

 nature. We behold them developed, but we never 

 see them formed. The most remote state to which 

 we can trace them is when attached to a body re- 

 sembling themselves, but developed before them, 

 that is, to a parent. So long as the young has no 

 independent existence, but merely participates in 

 that of its parent, it is called a germ. 



The place whereto the germ is attached, and the 

 cause which detaches it, and gives it an independ- 



us with its constituent textures, systems, and organs only par- 

 tially or imperfectly formed. Hence we may infer, that organiza- 

 tion is not the cause of life, otherwise we should perceive a more 

 perfect condition of the organs, before the vital phenomena became 

 so very manifest as they are at these periods. 



* This paragraph is neither precise nor consistent. M. Cuvier 

 commences it with ascribing life to organization, while he con- 

 cludes it with asserting that the properties of matter and the che- 

 mical affinities cannot produce organization and life ; yet at the 

 same place he professes himself to be ignorant of any other created 

 power in nature than the chemical affinities, which is capable of 

 uniting particles which before were separate. If he had concluded, 

 that we are ignorant of any other created power in inorganizad 

 nature than the one he has stated, capable of producing those 

 results, or that the subject, in its remotest as well as profoundest 

 relations, is placed beyond the reach of our senses and experience, 

 while the resulting phenomena which come under our daily obser- 

 vation — the obvious effects of these unseen and unknown causes, 

 are the fitting subjects for human intellection and speculation, he 

 would have stated what none could controvert. 



