Note 29 — Chapter VII · GENERAL DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO LIVES WITH RESPECT TO VITAL POWER.

Those theories no doubt are very incomplete that are borrowed from hydraulics, and probably will be so for a long time; but it arises from this, that the science on which it is founded, hydrodynamics, is still but little advanced. A great advance will unquestionably be made in physiology, when we shall arrive at a knowledge of the course of a fluid in a system of canals, which have the same physical conditions as the system of arterial and venous vessels. But it will be a long time before science will have arrived at that point. Is it necessary for this to make no use, in the explanation of the circulation, of the few facts which are known upon the course of the fluids? Is it necessary to enter entirely into the field of hypothesis, to suppose in the small vessels a sensibility and a contractility which evidently do not exist in the large ones? I cannot believe it, and I think even that if this hypothesis should be true, and if there should be demonstrated for the capillary vessels, those properties which are attributed to them, and which would have an influence on the course of the blood, we should then know but one of the conditions of this very complicated problem, and this would not in any degree do away the necessity of knowing all the mechanical conditions.