84 



ON ORGANIZED BODIES, 



I concur with these elegant writers in admitting the beautiful and harmo- 

 nious relation so obviously established between minerals, plants, and ani- 

 mals; but it is at the same time impossible to allow of the distinction 

 between vegetable and animal life here laid down; because, first, vegetables 

 are by no means nourished exclusively, as, indeed, M. Mirbel himself frankly 

 allows, from terrene elements ; and, secondly, because animals are as little 

 nourished exclusively from vegetable materials. Among insects, worms, 

 and even fishes, there are many tribes that derive by far the greater portion 

 of their increase from the mineral kingdom alone ; while even in man him- 

 self, air, water, common salt, and lime, which last is almost always an ingre- 

 dient of common salt, are substances indispensable to his growth, and are 

 derived immediately from the mineral kingdom. 



In laying down, therefore, a distinctive character for animals and plants, 

 we ave compelled to derive it from the more perfect of each kind ; and to 

 leave the extreme cases to be determined by the chemical components elimi- 

 nated on their decomposition. And under this broadview of the subject 

 I now proceed to observe, that while they agree in an origin by generation, 

 a growth by nutrition, and a termination by death ; in an organized structure, 

 and an internal living principle ; they differ in the powers with which the 

 living principle is endowed, and the effects it is capable of exerting. In 

 the plant it is limited, so far as we are capable of tracing it, to the proper- 

 ties of irritability, contractility, and simple instincts ; in the animal it su- 

 peradds to these properties those of muscularity, sensation, and voluntary 

 motion. 



There have been, indeed, and there still are, physiologists who, — not ad- 

 verting to the extraordinary effects which the power of irritability is capable 

 of producing when roused by different stimulants, and under the influence of 

 an internal and all-pervading principle of life, operating by instinctive laws 

 and instinctive actions, or those, as we shall show hereafter, which are spe- 

 cially directed to the growth, preservation, or reproduction of a living frame, 

 or any particular part of it, — have conceived plants as well as animals to be 

 possessed of sensation and muscular fibres ; and as sensation is the result of 

 a particular organ, and the organ producing it is connected with various 

 others, have at the same time liberally endowed them with a brain, a heart, 

 and a stomach ; and have very obligingly permitted them to possess ideas, 

 and the means of communicating ideas ; to fall in love and to marry, and thus 

 far to exercise the distinctive faculty of volition. The whole of which, how- 

 ever, is mere fancy, grounded altogether upon an erroneous and contracted 

 view of the effects of the principle of irritability when powerfully excited by 

 the influence of light, heat, air, moisture, and other causes. 



In reality, such kinds of loves and intermarriages are not peculiar to 

 plants, but are common to all nature : they exist between atom and atom, 

 and the philosopher calls them attractions ; they exist between congeries and 

 congeries, and the chemist calls them aflinities ; they exist between the iron 

 and the loadstone, and every one denominates them magnetism. Nor let it 

 be said that in these cases of mutual union we have nothing more than a 

 mere aggregation of body ; for we have often a third substance produced, and 

 actually generated, as the result of such union, far more discrepant from the 

 parent substances both in quality and feature than are ever to be met with in 

 vegetable or animal life. Thus, if an acid be married to an alkali, the pro- 

 geny brought forth will be a neutral salt, possessing not the remotest resem- 

 blance to the virtues of either of its parents. In like manner, if alkohol be 

 married to any of the more powerful acids, and the banns be solemnized over 

 an altar of fire, but not otherwise, the offspring engendered will be a sub- 

 stance called ether, equally unlike both its parents in its disposition. But the 

 form or features are as frequently changed as the temper. Thus, if we unite 

 olive oil, which is a liquid, with some of the oxides of lead, which are pow- 

 ders, the result is neither a liquid nor a powder, nor a medium of the two, 

 which would be a paste, but the hard adhesive plaster usually called diachy- 

 lon. So, again, if muriatic acid, which is a liquid, sport in dalliance with the 



