CHAP. IV.] OF LIFE. 31 



and liquids, obstructing them, so to speak ; then the colloidal 

 plasmatic substances will cease to restore themselves, to regene- 

 rate themselves. Soon the retardment will end in complete 

 arrest ; then the organised being will have ceased to live ; the 

 complex elements which composed it will change, will break 

 asunder, and the groups of their molecules and of their atoms will 

 re-enter the exterior medium, the mineral world. 



If, on the contrary, the. nutritive property of a living being 

 is sufficiently energetic to rise, as it were, to excess, even to 

 growth and reproduction, the being is sui-e of living in its 

 offspring ; it fills its place in the innumerable ■ crowd of living 

 beings, and can even, if the doctrine of evolution is as true as 

 it is probable, become the source of a superior organised type, 

 can ascend in the hierarchy of life. 



In fact, many of the inferior organisms are endowed only with 

 the properties of nutrition, growth, and 'reproduction. At a 

 greater degree of complication and perfection a new property 

 appears, motility, subordinated likewise to nutrition, when it 

 concerns the individual, to reproduction when it concerns the 

 series. No one is ignorant that large numbers of animals are 

 endowed solely with these four properties, nutrition, growth, 

 reproduction, and motility, which are possessed by a number of 

 plants also, as we shall see hereafter. 



Nutrition,, growth, and reproduction are truly fundamental 

 properties. They belong to the entire organic world, to every- 

 thing which lives and lasts. Above these properties must rank 

 three others, all naturally subordinate to the primordial property, 

 nutrition. These three are, the chlorophyllian property, motility^ 

 and innervation. 



The chlorophyllian property is, with rare exceptions, confined 

 to plants. Motility is, in a measure, common to animals and 

 vegetals. ■ Finally, the last vital property, innervation, is limited 

 to the superior animals. It is also the most delicate, the most 

 subordinated to, the most closely connected with, the integrity of 

 nutrition, the most dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the 



