1, Eng. trans. 1824.

[38] _Anatomie Generale_, Eng. trans., i., p. lii.

[39] _Anatomie Generale_, Eng. trans., i., p. lviii.

[40] _Loc cit._, i., sect. vii.

CHAPTER III

CUVIER

Cuvier was perhaps the greatest of comparative anatomists; his work
is, in the best sense of the word, classical.

Like all his predecessors, like Aristotle, like the Italian
anatomists, Cuvier studied structure and function together, even gave
function the primacy.

Some functions, he says,[41] are common to all organised bodies--origin
by generation, growth by nutrition, end by death. There are also
secondary functions. Of these the most important, in animals at least,
are the faculties of feeling and moving. These two faculties are
necessarily bound up together; if Nature has given animals sensation
she must also have given them the power of movement, the power to flee
from what is harmful and draw near to what is good. These two
faculties determine all the others. A creature that feels and moves
requires a stomach to carry food in. Food requires instruments to
divide it, liquids to digest it. Plants, which do not feel and do not
move, have no need of a stomach, but have roots instead. Thus the
"Animal Functions" of feeling and moving determine the character of
the organs of the second order, the organs of digestion. These in
their turn are prior to the organs of circulation, which are a means
to the end of distributing the nutrient fluid or blood to all parts of
the body. These organs of the third order are not only dependent on
those of the second order, but are also not even necessary, for many
animals are without them. Only animals with a circulatory system can
have definite breathing organs--lungs or gills. Plants, and animals
without a circulation, breathe by their whole surface.

There is accordingly a rational order of functions, and therefore of
the systems of organs which perform them. The most important are the
Animal Functions, with their great organ-system, the neuro-muscular
mechanism. Then come the digestive functions, and after them, and in a
sense accessory to them, the functions and organs of circulation and
respiration. The last three may be grouped as the Vital Functions.

The Animal Functions not only determine the character of the Vital
Functions, but influence also the primary faculty of generation, for
animals' power of movement has rendered their mode of fecundation more
simple, ha