reserve its individual existence,
because it is necessary that it repair its losses under penalty of
its destruction.

"But as the individual in question has not yet any special organ for
nutrition, it therefore absorbs by the pores of its internal surface
the substance adapted for its nourishment. Thus the first mode of
taking food in a living body so simple can be no other than by
absorption or a sort of suction, which is accomplished by the pores
of its outer surface.

"This is not all; up to the present time the animalized corpuscle we
are considering is still only a primitive animalcule because it as
yet has no special organ. Let us see then how nature will come to
furnish it with any primitive special organ, and what will be the
organ that nature will form before any others, and which in the
simplest animal is the only one constantly found; this is the
alimentary canal, the principal organ of digestion common to all
except colpodes, vibrios, proteus (amoeba), volvoces, monads, etc.

"This digestive canal is," he says--proceeding with his _a priori_
morphology--"a little different from that of this day, produced by
contractions of the body, which are stronger in one part of the body
than in another, until a little crease is produced on the surface of
the body. This furrow or crease will receive the food. Insensibly
this little furrow by the habit of being filled, and by the so
frequent use of its pores, will gradually increase in depth; it will
soon assume the form of a pouch or of a tubular cavity with porous
walls, a blind sac, or with but a single opening. Behold the
primitive alimentary canal created by nature, the simplest organ of
digestion."

In like _a priori_ manner he describes the creation of the faculty of
reproduction. The next organ, he says, is that of reproduction due to
the regenerative faculty. He describes fission and budding. Finally
(p. 122) he says:

"Indeed, we perceive that if the first germs of living bodies are
all formed in one day in such great abundance and facility under
favorable circumstances, they ought to be, nevertheless, by reason
of the antiquity of the causes which make them exist, the most
ancient organisms in nature."

In 1794 he rejected the view once held of a continuous chain of being,
the _echelle des etres_ suggested by Locke and by Leibnitz, and more
fully elaborated by Bonnet, from the inorganic to