LAMASCJC'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION 261 



exist. And, indeed, though it is not believed, as 

 some naturalists have wrongly held, but without 

 proof, that plants are bodies more simple in organi- 

 zation than the most simple animals, it is a veritable 

 error which observation plainly denies. 



" Truly, vegetable substance is less surcharged with 

 constituent principles than any animal substance 

 whatever, or at least most of them, but the substance 

 of a living body and the organization of these bodies 

 are two very different things. But there is in plants, 

 as in animals, a true gradation in organization from 

 the plant simplest in organization and parts up to 

 plants the most complex in structure and with the 

 most diversified organs. 



" If there is some approach, or at least some com- 

 parison to make between vegetables and animals, this 

 can only be by opposing plants the most simply 

 organized, like fungi and algae, to the most imperfect 

 animals like the polyps, and especially the amorphous 

 polyps, which occur in the lowest order. 



" At present we clearly see that in order to bring 

 about the existence of animals of all the classes, of all 

 the orders, and of all the genera, nature has had to 

 begin by giving existence to those which are the most 

 simple in organization and lacking most in organs 

 and faculties, the frailest in constituency, the most 

 ephemeral, the quickest and easiest to multiply ; and 

 we shall find in the amorphous or microscopic polyps 

 the most striking examples of this simplification of 

 organization, and the indication that it is solely among 

 them that occur the astonishing germs of animality. 



" At present we only know the principal law of the 

 organization, the power of the exercise of the func- 

 tions of life, the influence of the movement of fluids 

 in the supple parts of organic bodies, and the power 

 which the regenerations have of conserving the prog- 

 ress acquired in "the composition of organs. 



" At present, finally, relying on numerous observa- 



