Final Causes and Contemponeous Physiology (translated from the Revue des duex Mondes) [pp. 291-321]

~876.] FINAL CAUSES. 297
cell, the kernel, or the nucleus), and take the name of formed
organic elements, sometimes without any structure, as an am orphous, homogeneous substance, such as the marrow of the
bones, the gray substance of the brain, etc.
According to M. Robin, the essential characteristic of organization is not mechanical structure, but a certain mode of
molecular association of the immediate principles;* as soon as
this mode of molecular association exists, the organized substance, with or without structure, having form, or amorphous, is
endowed with the essential properties of life. These properties are five in number-nutrition, growth, reproduction, contraction, innervation. These five vital or essential properties are
not found in all living beings, but their being found together
4oes not depend on any mechanical structure. The study of
the organs and their functions is, then, only the study of the
various combinations of the organic elements and of their prop~rties.
If we now c~nsider the vital properties, and the first of these,
nutrition, the essential difference between an organization and
a machine will be seen more clearly. In a machine each one
of the molecules remains molecularly immovable, without evolution; any such change causes the destruction of the mechanism. On the otber hand, the very existence of an organism
depends on molecular change. The manner of molecular association of the immediate principles permits, in an organization,
the incessant renovation of the materials without causing destruction of the organs; moreover, that which characterizes organization is just this idea of evolution, of transformation, of
<Ievelopment-all incompatible and irreconcilable with the conception of a mechanical structure.
In reviewing the general sense of the physiological theories
which we have just expounded, and which seem the best
adapted to the present state of the science, it becomes apparent that physi~logy not only frees itself more and more in its
methods from the principle of final causes, but that in its doctrines it occupies itself less and less with the form and structure
of the organs and their mechanical adaptation to the function.
*Jrnmcd?ate ~rinc2A1es is the name given to certain ternary or quaternary chemical
~ompounds, which are almost exclusively peculiar to organized beings.