INTRODUCTION 
18 
or less flexible fibres or laminae of which intercept fluids more or less abundant — 
constitutes what is termed the organization ; and, as a consequence of what we have 
said, it follows that only organized bodies can enjoy life. 
Organization, then, results from a great number of dispositions or arrangements, 
which are all conditions of life ; and it is easy to conceive that the general move- 
ment of the life would be arrested, if its effect be to alter either of these conditions, 
so as to arrest even one of the partial motions of which it is composed. 
Every organized body, besides the qualities common to its tissue, has one proper 
form, not only in general and externally, but also in the detail of the structure 
of each of its parts ; and it is upon this form, which determines the particular direction 
of each of the partial movements that take place in it, that depends the complication of 
the general movement of its life, which constitutes its species, and renders it what it 
is. Each part concurs in this general movement by a peculiar action, and experiences 
from it particular effects ; so that, in every being, the life is a whole, resulting from 
the mutual action and reaction of all its parts. 
Life, then, in general, presupposes organization in general, and the life proper 
to each being presupposes the organization peculiar to that being, just as the ^ 
movement of a clock presupposes the clock ; and, accordingly, we behold life only 
in beings that are organized and formed to enjoy it ; and all the efforts of philo- 
sophers have not yet been able to discover matter in the act of organization, 
either of itself or by any extrinsic cause. In fact, life exercising upon the elements 
which at every instant form part of the living body, and upon those which it attracts 
to it, an action contrary to that which would be produced without it by the usual i 
chemical affinities, it is inconsistent to suppose that it can itself be produced by these ^ 
affinities, and yet we know of no other power in nature capable of reuniting previously ,i! 
separated molecules. 
The birth of . organized beings is, therefore, the greatest mystery of the organic 
economy and of all nature : we see them developed, but never being formed ; nay, 
more, all those of which we can trace the origin, have at first been attached to a 
body of the same form as their own, but which was developed before them ; — in 
one word, to di, parent. So long as the offspring has no independent life, but par- 
ticipates in that of its parent, it is called a germ. 
The place to which the germ is attached, and the occasional cause which detaches 
it, and gives it an independent life, vary ; but the primitive adherence to a similar 
being is a rule without exception. The separation of the germ is what is designated 
generation. 
All organized beings produce similar ones ; otherwise, death being a necessary con- 
sequence of life, their species would not endure. 
Organized beings have even the faculty of reproducing, in degrees varying with the 
species, certain of their parts of which they may have been deprived. This has been 
named the power of reproduction. 
The developement of organized beings is more or less rapid, and more or less ex- 
tended, according as circumstances are differently favourable. Heat, the supply and 
quality of nourishment, with other causes, exert great influence ; and this influence 
may extend to the whole body in general, or to certain organs in particular : — hence 
the similitude of offspring to their parents can never be complete. 
