THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 93 
stoechiology. Afterward comes the study of anatomical 
elements, or elementology. 'These elements, formed by the 
bringing into contact and the blending of immediate prin- 
ciples of the three classes, visible only under the micro- 
scope, and showing themselves under the form of cells, 
fibres, and tubes, are endowed, as we have said, with ele- 
mentary vital properties: nutrition, generation, evolution, 
contractility, and innervation. The science of the humcrs, 
or hygrology, is placed at a higher degree. The organic 
liquids, in fact, are formed by the dissolving in water of 
a certain number of immediate principles, and they hold 
anatomical elements suspended in them. The tissues, the 
study of which constitutes histology, are more complex. 
They proceed from the association and intertangling of 
anatomical elements. With the exception of those that 
are called products, they all contain several kinds of ana- 
tomical elements. Homaomerology treats of the systems 
formed by the assembling of parts identical in tissue (the 
nervous system, the bony system). In the higher degrees 
comes the study of organs, then that of apparatus. Such 
is the methodical gradation of the parts, the totality of 
which is the subject of anatomy. If we add that these 
parts, which represent the different complications of organ- 
ized matter, may be studied not only from the anatomical 
or static point of view strictly so called, but also from 
the physiological and therapeutic point of view, that is 
to say, in their course of action and in their relations to 
the media, we shall have indicated the complete frame of 
the science. 
This, for Robin and for most biologists, is the general 
constitution of biology; but this system is rather a plan and 
a method than a doctrine. We do not learn by it either 
what life is in itself, or what notion we must form of the 
regular succession and the concordant connection of phe- 
nomena, the dedication of organs to the performance of 
