To render this intelligible, let us make a calculation of what a single germ might produce. The seed of an elm, which does not weigh the hundredth part of an ounce, at the end of 100 years will produce a tree whose volume will be 60 cubic feet. At the tenth year this tree will have produced 1000 seeds, which being all sown, at the end of 100 years would each have also a volume equal to 60 cubic feet. Thus in 110 years there is produced more than 60,000 cubic feet of organized matter; 10 years more there will be 10,000,000 of fathoms, without including the 10,000 encreased every year, which would make 100,000 more; and ten years after there will be three times that number; thus in 130 years a single shoot will produce a volume of organized matter, which would fill up a space of 1000 cubic leagues; 10 years after it would comprehend a 1,000,000, and in 10 years more 1,000,000 times 1,000,000 cubic leagues; so that in 150 years the whole terrestrial globe might be entirely converted into one single kind of organized matter. In this production of organized body Nature would know no bounds, if it were not for the resistance of matters which are not susceptible of organization, and this proves that she does not incline to form inanimate but organized beings, and that in this she never stops but when irresistible inconveniences are opposed thereto. What we have already said on the seed of an elm may be said of any other; and it would be easy to demonstrate, that if we were to hatch every egg produced by hens for the space of 30 years, there would be a sufficient number of fowls to cover the whole surface of the earth. These kind of calculations demonstrate that organic formation is the most common work of Nature, and, apparently, that which costs her the least labour. But I will go farther; the general division which we ought to make of matter seems to me to be in _living_ and _dead matter_, instead of organized and brute; the brute is only that matter produced by the death of animals or vegetables; I could prove it by that enormous quantity of shells, and other cast-off matters of living animals, which compose the principal part of stones, marble, chalk, marle, earth, turf, and other substances, which we call brute matter, and which are only the ruins of dead animals or vegetables; but a reflection, which seems to me well founded, will, perhaps, make it better understood.