The following passage, which bears on this subject, is translated from his _Memoires de Physique_ (p.

250), where he contrasts the growth of organic bodies with that of minerals.
"The body of this living being not having been formed by _juxtaposition_, as most mineral substances, that is to say, by the external and successive apposition of particles aggregated _en masse_ by attraction, but essentially formed by generation, in its principle, it has then grown by intussusception--namely, by the introduction, the transportation, and the internal apposition of molecules borne along and deposited between its parts; whence have resulted the successive developments of parts which compose the body of this living individual, and from which afterwards also result the repairs which preserve it during a limited time." Here, as elsewhere in his various works, Lamarck brings out the fact, for the first time stated, that all material things are either non-living or mineral, inorganic; or living, organic.

A favorite phrase with him is living bodies, or, as we should say, organisms.

He also is the first one to show that minerals increase by juxtaposition, while organisms grow by intussusception.
No one would look in his writings for an idea or suggestion of the principle of differentiation of parts or organs as we now understand it, or for the idea of the physiological division of labor; these were reserved for the later periods of embryology and morphology.
_Origin of the First Vital Function._--We will now return to the germ.
After it had begun spontaneous existence, Lamarck proceeds to say: "Before the containable fluids absorbed by the small, jelly-like mass in question have been expelled by the new portions of the same fluids which reach there, they can then deposit certain of the contained fluids they carry along, and the movements of the contained fluids may apply these substances to the containing parts of the newly organized microscopic being.

In this way originates the first of the vital functions which becomes established in the simplest organism, _i.e._, nutrition.