S40 



i5R BARCLAY 



sidered as of trifling importance, has sometimes 

 proved fatal to the whole structure. But from 

 these factSj are we hastily to conclude with the 

 vulgar, that the joint co-operation of all the or- 

 gans, or the principal organs, is necessary to pro- 

 duce the phenomena of life ? or are we to suppose, 

 that because these phenomena are only perceived 

 through the medium of organs, that these organs 

 arc essential to the existence of Life itself? 



Organization, or those processes by which the or- 

 gans themselves have been formed, connected and 

 arranged^ are among the most striking phenomena 

 of life ; and, therefore, the life, or a principle of 

 life, must necessarily have existed, and even ope- 

 rated, before a single organ could be formed ; it 

 being impossible that the organs could precede, 

 regulate, or be the cause of, those processes by 

 which they themselves are brought into existence. 

 The geologist, therefore, with reason infers, that 

 all fossil, organized substances, of whatever order, 

 genus or species, had once lived in a state of con- 

 nection either with the animal or vegetable king- 

 dom, being evidently the effects, and not the cause 

 of the vital processes of organization. 



Even BiCHAT and Richerand, and several more 

 of the French Physiologists, sufficiently disposed 

 to ascribe much to the ponderable materials of 

 which organized systems are composed, and espe- 

 cially when assisted by what Sprengel calls the 

 Corpora imponderabilia, as heat and light, the 



