LAMARCK'S THEORY OF DESCENT 



329 



movements, execute, as I have said, contractile move- 

 ments which, provoked and varied without ceasing 

 by this stimulating cause, facilitate and hasten the 

 absorptions of which I have just spoken." . . . 



On the Transportation of the force-producing Move- 

 ments in the Interior of Animals. 



" If nature were confined 'to the employment of its 

 first means — namely, of a force entirely external and 

 foreign to the animal — its work would have remained 

 very important ; the animals would have remained 

 machines totally passive, and she would never have 

 given origin in any of these living beings to the ad- 

 mirable phenomena of sensibility, of inmost feelings 

 of existence which result therefrom, of the power of 

 action, finally, of ideas, by which she can create the 

 most wonderful of all, that of thought — in a word, 

 intelligence. 



" But, wishing to attain these grand results, she has 

 by slow degrees prepared the means, in gradually 

 giving consistence to the internal parts of animals ; 

 in differentiating the organs, and in multiplying and 

 farther forming the fluids contained, etc., after which 

 she has transported into the interior of these animals 

 that force productive of movements and of actions 

 which in truth it would not dominate at first, but 

 which she has come to place, in great part, at their 

 disposition when their organization should become 

 very much more perfect. 



" Indeed, from the time that the animal organiza- 

 tion had sufficiently advanced in its structure to pos- 

 sess a nervous system — even slightly developed, as in 

 insects — the animals provided with this organization 

 were endowed with an intimate sense of their exist- 

 ence, and from that time the force productive of 

 movements was conveyed into the very interior of 

 the animal. 



