FERMENTS, FERMENTATIONS, AND LIFE. 261 
tion clearly depend on this: that, in the former, the phe- 
nomenon is subjected to the conditions and vital progress 
of those organized corpuscles which elaborate the ferment 
within the substance of the fermentable liquids, while, in - 
the latter, the phenomenon is brought about by a ferment 
already formed and prepared. But this latter ferment is no 
less of organic origin; it, too, arises from living beings, 
animal or vegetable. Whether it emanates, like diastase, 
from the young cells of the seed, or results, like pepsin, 
from work done in the digestive apparatus, it is the labor 
of life, just as much as if it had been completed by globules 
of yeast or bundles of bacteria. Thus the efficient sources 
of all fermentations are the same. All ferments are at bot- 
tom alike, whether procured directly for the fermentable 
liquid by microscopic bodies inhabiting it, or emanating 
from corpuscles that inhabit elsewhere. The true doctrine 
of fermentations consists in this point. 
Henceforth, then, we may consider ferments as products 
of a fecundation taking place in cells, as secretions elabo- 
rated by those myriads of infinitely little corpuscles, some 
crowded, squeezed, condensed, into the palpable organs of 
animals and plants—others free and moving, disseminated, 
as we shall see, into vast, intangible space. The energy 
which distinguishes these microscopic animal and vegeta- 
ble growths also belongs to the microscopic elements mak- 
ing up the living tissues in the higher animals. We must 
give to this property, hitherto considered as special, the 
high dignity of a fundamental and universal attribute of 
organized cells. We must detect, in the most complex 
conversions and processes of nutrition in superior beings, 
the same untiring and primitive force that marks the sub- 
tile action of invisible and insignificant monads. 
No doubt, the corpuscles of different species—to which, 
in the last analysis, we reduce animals and plants of every 
kind and degree—are not identical. Each species has its 
