OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY i6l 



more likely that these simple organisms are them- 

 selves regenerated ? After much verbiage and repeti- 

 tion, he concludes : 



" We may conceive that the simplest organisms 

 can arise from a minute mass of substances which 

 possess the following conditions — namely, which will 

 have solid parts in a state nearest the fluid conditions, 

 consequently having the greatest suppleness and 

 only sufficient consistence to be susceptible of con- 

 stituting the parts contained in it. Such is the 

 condition of the most gelatinous organized bodies. 



" Through such a mass of substances the subtile and 

 expansive fluids spread, and, always in motion in the 

 milieu environing it, unceasingly penetrate it and 

 likewise dissipate it, arranging while traversing this 

 mass the internal disposition of its parts, and render- 

 ing it suitable to continually absorb and to exhale 

 the other environing fluids which are able to penetrate 

 into its interior, and which are susceptible of being 

 contained. 



" These other fluids, which are water charged with 

 dissolved {dissous) gas, or with other tenuous sub- 

 stances, the atmospheric air, which contains water, 

 etc., I call containable fluids, to distinguish them from 

 subtile fluids, such as caloric, electricity, etc., which 

 no known bodies are believed to contain. 



" The containable fluids absorbed by the small 

 gelatinous mass in question remain almost motionless 

 in its different parts, because the non-containable 

 subtile fluids which always penetrate there do not 

 permit it. 



" In this way the uncontainable fluids at first mark 

 out the first traces of the simplest organization, and 

 consequently the containable fluids by their move- 

 ments and their other influences develop it, and 

 with time and all the favorable circumstances com- 

 plete it." 



