OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 



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qualities of the primeval protoplasmic matter fitted 

 to receive the first traces of organization and life : 



" Every mass of substance homogeneous in appear- 

 ance, of a gelatinous or mucilaginous consistence, 

 whose parts, coherent among themselves, will be in 

 the state nearest fluidity, but will have only a con- 

 sistence sufificient to constitute containing parts, will 

 be the body most fitted to receive the first traces of 

 organization and Hfe." 



In the third part of the Philosophie zoologique 

 Lamarck considers the physical causes of feeling — i.e., 

 those which form the productive force of actions, and 

 those giving rise to intelligent acts. After describing 

 the nervous system and its functions, he discusses the 

 nervous fluid. His physiological views are based on 

 those of Richerand's Physiologic, which he at times 

 quotes. 



Lamarck's thoughts on the nature of the nervous 

 fluid {Recherches sur le fluide nerveux) are curious 

 and illustrative of the gropings after the truth of his 

 age. 



He claims that the supposed nervous fluid has 

 much analogy to the electric, that it is the feu ^tyr^ 

 " animalized by the circumstances under which it 

 occurs." In his Recherches sur V organisation des 

 corps vivans (1802) he states that, as the result of 

 changes continually undergone by the principal fluids 

 of an animal, there is continually set free in a state of 

 feu fixe a special fluid, which at the instant of its 

 disengagement occurs in the expansive state of the 

 caloric, then becomes gradually rarefied, and insen- 

 sibly arrives at the state of an extremely subtile fluid 



