These spermatic bodies, which move, may be looked upon as the first assemblages of the organic molecules which proceed from every part of the body; when a quantity of them collect they may be perceived with the microscope; but if they collect only in small quantity the body which they form will be too minute to be perceived, and in this case we shall not be able to distinguish any in the seminal liquor. A very long continuance of observations would be necessary to determine what can be the cause of all the differences remarked in the states of this liquor.
I can assert, from having often tried it, that by infusing the seminal liquors in water closely corked, at the end of three or four days an infinite multitude of moving bodies will be found, although the seminal liquors had no motion on being first taken from the body of the animal. Flesh, blood, chyle, urine, nay all animal or vegetable substances, contain organic particles, which move at the end of some days in an infusion of water; they appear to act and move nearly in the same manner, and though produced from different bodies are perfectly similar, without any of them having a power peculiar to themselves. If these bodies must absolutely be termed animals, it must be allowed they are so imperfect that they ought to be looked upon as the outlines of them, or rather as bodies simply composed of particles the most essential to the existence of an animal; for natural machines, such as those found in the roe of a calmar, although they put themselves in action at certain times, are certainly not animals, although they are organized, acting, and, as I may say, living beings.
If it is once allowed, that the productions of Nature follow in an uniform order, and advance by imperceptible degrees and links, we shall have no difficulty in conceiving there are organic bodies existing, which belong neither to animals, vegetables, nor minerals.
It is certain, however, that all animals and vegetables contain an infinity of organic living molecules. These molecules successively take different forms, and different degrees of motion and activity, according to different circumstances They are in a much greater number in the seminal liquor of both sexes, and in the germs of plants, than in other parts of the animal or vegetable. There exists, then, a living substance in animals and vegetables, common to both, and which substance is necessary to their nutrition. An animal procures nutriment from an animal or vegetable substance, and the vegetable can likewise be nourished from an animal or vegetable in a decomposed state. This nutritive substance, common to both, is always living, always active, and produces an animal or vegetable, as it finds an internal mould or an analogous matrix, as we have explained in the first chapters; but when this active substance collects in great abundance, in those parts where it can unite, it forms in the animal body other living creatures, such as the tape-worm, ascarides, and worms, which are sometimes found in the veins, in the sinus of the brain, in the liver, &c. These kinds of animals do not owe their existence to the animals of the same species, and we may, therefore, suppose, they are produced by this organic matter when it is extravasated, or is too abundant for the lacteal vessels to absorb. We shall hereafter have occasion to examine more largely the nature of those worms, and many other animals which are formed in a similar manner.
When this organic matter, which may be looked on as an universal seed, is collected in any great quantity, as in the seminal liquors, and in the mucilaginous parts of the infusion of plants, its first effect is to vegetate, or rather to produce vegetating beings. These zoophytes swell, extend, ramify, and produce globules, ovals, and other small bodies, of different figures, which have all a kind of animal life, a progressive motion, which is often very swift, and sometimes very slow. These globules themselves decompose, change their figures, and become smaller; and in proportion as they diminish in size the rapidity of their motion augments.
I have sometimes thought that the venom of the viper, and other active poisons, even that of the bite of a mad dog, might possibly be this active matter too rarefied; but I have not as yet had time to make the experiments which I had projected on this matter, as well as on drugs used in medicine; all that I can at present ascertain is, that all infusions of the most active drugs swarm with moving bodies, which form therein in much less time than in other substances.
Almost all microscopic animals are of the same nature as the organized bodies which move in the seminal liquor, in the infusions of vegetables and the flesh of animals; the eel-like bodies in flour, vinegar, and water, in which lead has been soaked, are beings of the same nature as the first, and have a like origin.
VARIETIES IN THE GENERATION OF ANIMALS.