This leads us to believe that there is an infinity of organic particles actually existing and living in nature, the substance of which is the same with that of organized bodies. As we have just observed, in a structure of a similar kind, though of inanimate matter, that it was composed of an infinity of particles which have a perfect semblance to the whole body, and as there must perhaps be millions of small cubes of accumulated salts to form a sensible individual grain of sea-salt, so likewise millions of organic particles, like the whole, are required to form one out of that multiplicity of germs contained in an elm, or a polypus; and as we must separate, bruise, and dissolve a cube of sea-salt to perceive, by means of crystallization, the small cubes of which it is composed; we must likewise separate the parts of an elm or polypus to discover, by means of vegetation and expansion, the small elms or polypuses contained in those parts. The difficulty of giving way to this idea arises from a prejudice strongly established, that there is no method of judging of the complex, except by the simple, and that, to conceive the organic constitution of a body we must reduce it to its simple and unorganized parts, and that it is more easy to conceive how a cube is composed of other cubes than how one polypus is composed of others; but if we attentively examine what is meant by simple and complex, we shall then find that in this, as in every thing else, the plan of nature is quite different from the very rough draught of it formed by our ideas.