Note 19 — Chapter VII · GENERAL DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO LIVES WITH RESPECT TO VITAL POWER.

It must be remembered that the existence of such a sensibility is purely conjectural. As it is not transmitted to a common centre, we can recognize it only by its effects. In order to explain these effects, there is no need of admitting a similar faculty. This sensibility moreover, if its existence should be admitted, would be found continually in fault. The stomach, for example, allows a substance to go out of its cavity which could never serve for aliment, provided this substance exhibits a degree of fluidity approaching that of chyme. The absorbents take up the most noxious fluids, those even the action of which is sufficiently powerful to destroy the organization of their parietes; the heart contracts without the entrance of the blood into it, &c.