I70 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



able. He prefers to think that nature is only a 

 result, " whence, I suppose, and am glad to admit, 

 a first cause, in a word, a supreme power which 

 has given existence to nature, which has made it as 

 a whole what it is." 



As to the source of life in bodies endowed with it, 

 he considers it a problem more difficult than to de- 

 termine the course of the stars in space, or the size, 

 masses, and movements of the planets belonging to 

 our solar system ; but, however formidable the prob- 

 lem, the difficulties are not insurmountable, as the 

 phenomena are purely physical — i.e., essentially result- 

 ing from acts of organization. 



After defining life, in the third chapter (beginning 

 vol. ii.) he treats of the exciting cause of organic 

 movements. This exciting cause is foreign to the 

 body which it vivifies, and does not perish, like the 

 latter. " This cause resides in invisible, subtile, 

 expansive, ever-active fluids which penetrate or are 

 incessantly developed in the bodies which they 

 animate." These subtile fluids we should in these 

 days regard as the physico-chemical agents, such as 

 heat, light, electricity. 



What he says in the next two chapters as to the 

 " orgasme " and irritability excited by the before- 

 mentioned exciting cause may be regarded as a crude 

 foreshadowing of the primary properties of proto-. 

 plasm, now regarded as the physical basis of Y\i&-~i.e., 

 contractility, irritability, and metabolism. In Chapter 

 VI. Lamarck discusses direct or spontaneous genera- 

 tion in the same way as in 1802. In the following 

 paragraph we have foreshadowed the characteristic 



