Chapter XXII: Part III: Biology--Of the Whole in Singulars (9)

2381. The middle finger is the elongated radius, and is therefore the longest or radial digit. It is that which is persistent, if only one finger has been left, as in the horse. The ring-finger is the ulnar finger. It is that which, along with the former, appears in the bi-ungulate animals; the spurious or dew-claws are the auricular and index-finger; the thumb is the last ramification, is therefore always arrested, and frequently present only as a wart-like excrescence or papilla.

2382. All animals, which have true digits, are furnished with five of them, more or less completely developed. If what has been called the metacarpal bone of the thumb be numbered, which it must, as a digital articulation or phalanx, every finger has thus one carpal bone, and each bone of the fore arm also one.

2383. The sexual members or feet correspond in all their pieces to the arms: the pelvis is the shoulder repeated; and certainly, the iliac bone is equivalent to the scapula, the ischium to the coracoid process, the os pubis to the acromion, the marsupial bone to the clavicle.

_Cephalic Members._

2384. Both pairs of limbs are repeated in the head, because in it the whole trunk is repeated; the upper jaw corresponds to the arms, the lower jaw to the feet. Each jaw consists of two members, which are ankylosed in the higher animals at their point of meeting or in front, but in Fishes are partly, and in Insects completely, separated.

2385. Each jaw consists of the same bony divisions as the limbs of the trunk, of scapula, humerus, and fore-arm; or of pelvis, femur, and tibia. This is easily to be demonstrated in Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes.

2386. The digits are repeated in the teeth. The teeth are claws.

2387. There are therefore five kinds of teeth, which correspond to the five digits. The thumb becomes the canine tooth; the index-finger the false molars; the middle finger the laniary molar, the ring-finger the second, and the little finger the third true molar tooth.

2388. The intermaxillary with its incisor teeth belongs, as well as the palatal bones, to the pharynx; and is a visceral or intestinal maxilla.

2389. The lower animals therefore, as the Fishes, have almost nothing but intermaxillary and palatal teeth. They act principally upon the lingual teeth. The reptiles have still palatal teeth, which higher up in the vertebrate series disappear.

_Symmetry._

2390. As the cervical ribs have nothing more to inclose, have no longer to respire, but only to move; their symmetrical development is thus undelayed. The symmetry is at first wholly attained by the act of opening or apertion.

2391. The limbs are the most symmetrical organs. They are symmetrical in each smallest part, and these parts again assume a symmetrical arrangement in regard to each other. They are the ideal of symmetry.

2392. They are, however, the free living symmetry. They can create by their motions symmetrical forms. The symmetry consists chiefly in, and has been produced only by, the motion.

2393. The symmetry of the motion is the most exalted, for it is that which is endowed with life. The symmetry of the form is that which is dead.

2394. The symmetry of the form appertains to inorganic nature, the symmetry of the motion is the property of animals.

2395. Dancing and acting are the highest organic symmetrical movements, and also the highest symmetries. They are the symmetry of the motor members, wrought by motion.

2396. Music is a much higher symmetry of motion.

2397. Speech is the highest spiritual symmetry; it is the dance and histrionism of the spirit or mind.

2. _Muscular Organs._

2398. The muscles are everywhere attached to the bones, and help to form with them the same set of organs.

2399. The muscles of the larynx are therefore the antetypes of the costal muscles, these of the member-muscles, and the dorsal muscles of the scapular and pelvic muscles.

2400. The muscles of the limbs are found in a state of treble repetition. That the muscles of the arm and leg are of one kind, admits of being demonstrated with tolerable facility. But it is necessary, that in doing this regard be paid to the ligaments.

2401. The ligaments are only stunted muscles. Without bringing them into account, the muscular system does not admit of being explained and understood.

2402. The crural muscles are again found in the lower jaw.

2403. The brachial muscles, on the upper jaw or face.

2404. The movements of the facial muscles correspond to those of the limb-muscles. Upon this depends the interpretation of dumb-show, or the art of physiognomy.

3. _Nervous Organs._

2405. Nervous organs are liberations of individual parts of the nervous system, and their endowment with a peculiar function or sensation.

2406. The liberations of the nerves are combinations with the other anatomical systems at the spot where they have attained their highest evolution.

2407. Each system, however, has its peculiar process. Through the reception or adoption of the systems into the nervous system, a peculiar sensation must therefore originate.

2408. Peculiar sensations are sensations of sense.

2409. The combinations of the anatomical systems with the nervous system, whereby the former have been subordinated to the latter, are consequently _sensorial organs_, or organs of sense.

2410. In the sensorial organs the processes of the several systems attain unto sensation. They are brains of the anatomical systems.

2411. There are as many senses as there are different anatomical systems, and consequently senses belonging to vegetative and animal life.

2412. The number of vegetative systems is 3; the vascular, intestinal, and pulmonary system.

2413. The most complete combination of the vascular with the nervous system is the integument--constituting the tegumentary sense, or _sense of feeling_.

2414. The most complete combination of the intestinal system with the nerves is the tongue--intestinal or _gustatory sense_.

2415. The most complete combination of the lungs with the nerves is the nose--pulmonary or _olfactory sense_.

2416. Among the three animal systems, bones and muscles produce, from their association, only one action--the motion. The most complete and perfect combination of the motor system with the nerves, is in the ear--osseo-muscular or _auditory sense_.

2417. The nervous system has become a self-substantial organ in the eye--the nervous, or _visual sense_.

2418. There are therefore only 5 senses; they are none other than repetitions of the anatomical systems in the sensation; they are the highest developments which are possible in the lower systems, being the blossoms or heads of such systems.

2419. These systems are, however, processes of the universe taken up into the organization. In its organs of sense, the processes of the universe are thus felt or perceived. The senses are world-organs, and are therefore placed in contact with the world, or occupy an outward position.

2420. The vascular system is the nutritive system. In it the blood coagulates into the solid parts of the body. The feeling-sense is therefore sensible of the nutrition or rigidifying process of the body. Now, the Solid of the planet is the earth. The sense of feeling perceives therefore opposition--it is an _earth-sense_.

2421. The function of the intestinal canal is digestion. In taste, the process of digestion is felt. But digestion is a solvent, a hydrapoietic process; in taste the water is therefore felt--it is the _water-sense_.

2422. Respiration is a process of oxydation. In smell the respiratory process is felt. Oxydation is, however, an air-process--it is _air-sense_. Thus do the three vegetative senses feel the elements of the planet--are _planetary senses_.

2423. The animal systems are symbols of the æther, of the gravity with the heat or motion, and of the light.

2424. The motion is only moved matter, and thus a combination of the muscular and osseous system. The ear therefore perceives the motion of the primary matter, or the atomic motion--it is _gravity-sense_, _æther-sense_.

2425. The light is the tension-process of the æther; to see, is therefore in an organism to emit light or shine--_light-sense_.

2426. The signification of the senses is twofold; they are anatomical _systems_ which have become nerves, and on that account also _elements_ that have attained unto sensation.

1. Sense of feeling--vascular, tegumentary, nutritive sense, _earth-sense_.

2. Gustatory sense--intestinal, digestive sense, _water-sense_.

3. Olfactory sense--pulmonic, respiratory sense, _air-sense_.

4. Auditory sense--osseo-muscular, motor sense, _æther-sense_.

_Matter-Sense._

5. Visual sense--nervous, tension-sense, _light-sense_.

2427. The sensorial organs are not simply combinations of the anatomical systems with the nerves, but also with the bones and muscles. These have been entirely taken up into the signification of the animal body.

2428. Each sense has its own nervous, osseous, and muscular system.

2429. The sense of feeling has its bones and muscles in the limbs.

2430. The sense of taste, its bones in the lingual bone, its muscles in and upon the tongue.

2431. The sense of smell, its bones in the nasal bones, its muscles being frequently very much developed in the snout or proboscis.

2432. The sense of hearing, its bones in the auditory ossicles, its muscles in the auditory conch.

2433. The sense of sight, its bones in a ring surrounding the sclerotic coat and in the eyelids, its muscles in the ocular muscles.

2434. Besides the proper sensorial nerves, each organ of sense is provided with nerves for the motor system and for the vegetative systems, especially those of secretion.

2435. The integument has, besides the nerves of the tactile papillæ, vascular and motor nerves.

2436. The tongue is supplied with nerves of motion and digestion, and has therefore three pairs of nerves.

2437. The nose receives motor and respiratory nerves from the fifth pair.

2438. The ear has likewise three kinds of nerves; the auditory nerves, facial nerves, and a branch from the fifth pair, not to mention those that are distributed to the auditory conch.

2439. The eye has, in addition to its wholly special motor nerves, a number of others, which superintend its vegetative systems, such as the iris and the secretions of the humours.

a. VEGETATIVE SENSES.

1. _Vascular Senses._

2440. All senses are only conditionated by the peripheric nervous mass because they are combinations of the nervous mass with the blossoms of the inferior systems.

2441. The most general system of the animal is the vascular system, which is represented externally as integument. The animal was in the commencement nothing but integument, and this again naught but vascular and nervous mass, so that the whole integument was thus an organ of sensation.

2442. Through the integument the animal becomes an individual, or a something distinct from the aggregate of nature. Now as the integument is principally the organ of sensation, so is the primary sensation that act, by which the animal is distinguished from nature. The tegumentary sense is the sense of _distinction_, of limitation.

2443. Through the act of discriminating, a something foreign or extraneous is granted us. The immediate perception of what is extraneous, is called feeling. Tegumentary sense is _sense of feeling_.

2444. The feeling-sense is the first in the animal.

2445. It is that which is general in the animal.

2446. The whole animal is naught but a sense of feeling.

2447. Out of the feeling-sense all other senses must be developed, just as all other systems are developed out of the tegumentary formation.

_Organs of Touch._

2448. Where, however, the skin has attained to a higher grade of formation, or where it has combined with higher systems, there also will the sense of feeling be supplied by the former.

2449. The combination of the integument with the osseous and muscular system, and with a nervous system of its own, takes place in the limbs. Since the motor members are only a liberated thorax, so no other sense can belong to them but that of feeling, which the thorax previously possessed.

2450. But these sensitive organs are moved, and therefore voluntary organs, digits, or former branchiæ. Moveable or voluntary organs of feeling are called _tactile organs_. The feeling of the motor members is touch.

2451. The highest feeling necessarily consists in touching, because it has in that become active, while before it was only passive.

2452. In the situation of the sensitive papillæ, the origin of the digits from respiratory organs admits of being still recognized. They are arranged in spiral lines upon the points of the fingers.

2453. The sexual organs belong as tegumentary developments to the sense of feeling. There is no special sexual sense.

2. _Intestinal Sense._

2454. Opposite to the general feeling or the integument, the function of the intestine is evolved. In the trunk it is simply busied with its own processes; when it first mounts or ascends into the head, it becomes subordinated to the nervous action.

2455. The combination of the intestine with bones, muscles and peculiar nerves, is presented in the tongue. This is the sensitive organ of the intestine.

2456. The tongue is a feeling-sense in water, just as the skin was that in the air. For it is the blossom of the digestive process. To the tongue therefore belongs the digestive or water-organ of the mouth, which is constituted by the salivary glands.

2457. The sensation of what is fluid in its chemical relations is called _taste_. Gustation is not a peculiar process, but obviously only the nervous commencement of the digestive process. On that account also the gustatory sense still lies concealed in a cavity. The whole buccal or oral cavity still belongs to the sense of taste.

2458. As in the sense of feeling the motor system still predominates, so does it also in the tongue, as being the second sense, which has been liberated from the plant. The nervous mass is in this sense not preponderant over the muscular and bony mass.

2459. The tongue is still to be regarded as an organ of touch, though one in which the flesh or muscle has gained a mastery over the bones, while in the true tactile organ the bones determine the principal forms and functions. The tongue is a nervous organ in the muscle, the hand is such in the bone.

2460. The hyoid or lingual bone is none other than the first branchial arch, and consists pretty nearly of the same pieces as the arm.

2461. Compound lingual bones, such as occur in many Reptiles, have originated from coalescence of several branchial arches.

2462. Like the limbs, so is the tongue originally a double organ. In most Reptiles it is longitudinally fissured. Such animals have usually also a double penis. In all animals the tongue is divided into two moieties, which are only connate by means of suture. The penis also consists of two connate penes.

2463. As in the tegumentary sense, the nerves could not be peculiar or special in kind, but took their origin from all parts, and particularly from the spinal cord, so also is this the case with the intestinal sense, which is still only an internal tegumentary sense. The lingual nerves proceed from several situations, and that too from the upper part of the spinal cord.

2464. The oral cavity also consists, properly speaking, of mere tactile organs, which have been repeated in the head. Thus, there are tactile organs which are subservient to the gustatory sense, in biting, chewing, and swallowing.

2465. The lips are tactile organs upon the threshold or brink, as it were, of the gustatory sense.

2466. In the oral cavity, however, the glands of the intestinal canal are repeated. The salivary glands secrete fluid, like the pancreatic glands.

2467. The sense of feeling is present in all animals. They are only animals by virtue of it; but the sense of taste appears to be first formed at a later period, after the intestine has separated from the integument; in the animals that have no intestine, its existence is problematical, and even in Fishes and Birds it is but poorly developed.

3. _Pulmonic or Lung-sense._

2468. When the respiratory organ is hoisted up into the head, and there becomes an organ of sensation, it passes over into a sense.

2469. That the nose is the thorax, together with its viscera, repeated in the head, has been already remarked. The many convolutions of the turbinated or olfactory bones correspond to the ramifications of the trachea; the nasal cartilages to the tracheal or laryngeal rings; the olfactory membrane to the pulmonic vesicles.

2470. The process of the lungs repeated in the head becomes smell, like that of the intestine became taste. The olfactory sense is the highest blossom of the arteriose vascular system or the branchial net. On this account the olfactory membrane is the most delicate, and the densest tissue of arteries and veins.

2471. The nose is related to the mouth, as the thoracic is to the abdominal cavity; the olfactory membrane to the tongue, as the lung is to the stomach. It is a cephalo-thorax. The nose is not therefore so completely closed as the mouth, but is opened through the two most anterior air-holes or spiracula. The nasal apertures or nostrils are the last persistent remnants of the spiracula, after all those upon the sides of the body have been closed up.

2472. It is the last organ of sense, which has been evolved from the trunk. It is therefore nobler than the two others, and has also a nobler object, the air.

2473. The nerves of the olfactory organ are peculiar to it, and are encephalic nerves. As the sense of smell is the pulmonic or arteriose sense; so also does the arteriose substance of the brain combine with this organ. The olfactory nerves consist of cineritious or gray substance, and are only prolongations thereof.

2474. This is the only phenomenon of the kind met with among all nerves, but it is commensurate with the character or signification of this organ. A sensible pulmonary organ can only have arteriose nerves. As the liver is throughout venous, so is the nose throughout arteriose in quality.

b. ANIMAL SENSES.

2475. It now only remains for us to consider the motor and the sensitive system proper upon their highest stage of development. The motor system, when represented in the nervous system, is a peculiar organ of sensation, as is likewise the nervous system itself upon attaining its highest state of development.

4. _Osseo-Muscular Sense._

2476. The lowest condition of the motor system is the limbs, which represent no peculiar sense, but only the sense of feeling refined or set in motion. This motor system ascends into the head, and there no longer exercises its motive powers in prehension, progression, &c., but solely unto sensation. Now, a system, which converts its function into that of sensation, is a sense.

2477. The sensorial organ, which simply through motion, or a resistance presented to that of the atoms, produces sensation, or wherein the motion as such is felt, is the _Ear_.

2478. The ear is none other than the ultimate development of the bone and muscle, when they are brought under the direct dominion of the nerves.

2479. The auditory ossicles are the limbs subtilized or refined in character. They have joints, are provided with muscles, and move exactly like the limbs. It may be said; that the stapes is the scapula, the incus the humerus, the malleus the fore arm, and the concha with its cartilages, the hand with its digits.

2480. The ear, like the bulk of the limbs, has originated from branchiæ. In Fishes, the auditory ossicles have degenerated into the branchial opercula.

2481. The ear-trumpet (or Eustachian tube), which opens into the mouth, is the internal branchial aperture.

2482. The motor system, however, belongs to the trunk, whose viscera are repeated also in the ear, or in a cavity which has been called its labyrinth. The three semicircular canals appear to correspond to the intestine, the cochlea to the trachea.

2483. The ear has not only a nerve, but likewise a brain, of its own.

2484. The cerebellum is the auditory brain, and from it the acoustic nerves take their rise. For, since the ear is the sense of the whole motor system, and consequently of half the animal, it inevitably follows, that an appropriate or special nervous mass must be developed for it, just as the myelon or spinal chord has been for the trunk. An organ, which is so constantly active, must necessarily have a large nervous mass. The cerebellum is consequently not a brain in the general sense, but one which is wholly individualized. It participates in the motion, which, as sound, is transmitted to the animal.

2485. By its signification as well as by its own brain, the ear gives us to recognize its elevated rank above the other senses.

2486. The ear must stand in relation with the body's limbs.

2487. The ears first make their appearance in animals, associated with a tolerable development of the limbs. With the exception of a few instances, the ears first become apparent in Fishes, being in them at least furnished for the first time with true ossicles and semicircular canals. The ear, like the limbs, with which it constantly maintains a parallel course, is very slowly perfected. In the Fishes which have only fins (as instruments of locomotion) it is wholly concealed within the cranial bones; in the Reptiles it emerges or is more exposed to view; but for the first time in Birds and Mammalia where, generally speaking, the limbs also are first perfected, it attains its completion; in them only is the cochlea fully developed, and an auditory meatus which opens externally.

5. _Nervous Sense._

2488. In all lower organs, and even in the senses which have hitherto been commented upon, the nervous system was not the chief, but only the co-ordinate agent. It has only by its conjunction with, assisted in elevating the character of, other systems, so that their material might be converted into spiritual processes. But the nervous is also a self-substantial system, and must therefore attain likewise a free development.

2489. With the highest organs of the nervous system, the relation which has been hitherto maintained, must be reversed. The inferior systems will now be the co-ordinate agents.

2490. The highest nervous organ can only possess that function, which is originally peculiar to the nervous system, i. e. the most delicate polarization, the light-function. There is the _Light-sense_.

2491. The eye is nothing but a nervous system represented in a state of purest organization, just as the ear was the purest system of motion.

2492. In the eye it is the brain itself, which expands, in order to turn unto or face the light.

2493. As the ear has its own brain, so also has the eye; the cerebrum is the optic brain. (Ed. 1st, 1811. §. 2317.) This is the rationale of our having two brains.

2494. Now the cortical or gray substance has been already diverted from the cerebrum to supply the olfactory sense. Its medullary or white substance remains for the eye. The medullary brain is the optic brain. The medullary is consequently the nobler part of the nervous system.

2495. The brain's medulla is homologous to the light; its exterior or cortical portion is related to the material light, the air.

2496. The eye is only a medullary brain, posited peripherically and in a nervous manner. The brain itself has elongated and become integument.

2497. The visual membrane (or retina) is the cerebral substance cystically expanded. It must be regarded as being originally a closed bladder or cyst. (Ed. 1st, 1811. §. 2321.)

2498. The optic nerve is itself hollow, and unites the cerebral with the orbitar cavity.

2499. The vitreous body, which fills out the cyst of the retina, is the cerebral medulla which has become transparent, or a semi-fluid albuminous mass.

2500. The sclerotic coat of the eye is the continuation of the brain's dura mater.

2501. The vascular or choroid coat of the eye is the continuation of the encephalic pia mater. All parts of the brain have been consequently continued into the eye.

2502. Now, what the brain is for the earthly body, that also must it be for the eye. The eye is not simply brain, but a representation also of the whole body. The brain can, forsooth, be nowhere without its body; if therefore it is elevated into the eye, so also must it take up and elevate the body along with itself.

2503. The eye is an entire body, a whole animal. Again, in the next place, the animal systems, such as limbs, thorax and abdomen, have been most distinctly represented in it. The light is seized, respired, digested, and hence felt by the eye.

2504. As the light represents chaotically the whole of nature, but this material nature enters completely into the animal through the processes of the trunk, so does the light enter it through the eye. The eye is the chaotic representation of all material processes of a body.

2505. The limbs or members of the eye are repeated in the ocular muscles and the sclerotic or bony ring; in many Fishes the eye stands upon a flexible pedicle, as in the Crabs. The ocular muscles move the eye in different directions like a hand.

2506. The sclerotic corresponds to the corium, the cornea to the digital unguis, or finger-nail.

2507. The choroid or vascular coat, is the respiratory system or lung in the eye. The iris corresponds to the larynx, the pupil to the glottis; its expansion and contraction is a respiratory movement.

2508. The choroid coat incloses also an osseous mass, the lens--a vertebral body. The morbid states of the lens are osseous diseases, such as gout.

2509. In the chambers of the eye, water, as being a product of digestion, is constantly secreted.

2510. The orbitar cavity is a mouth with salivary glands--giving vent to tears.

2511. The lachrymal canal is a branchial duct, which opens into the nose, like the Eustachian tubes did from the ear into the mouth.

2512. The eyelids consequently correspond to the lips, and are in like manner fringed with hairs.

2513. As the body has everywhere two halves, and laterally also presents two entire organisms, so also is the formation of the nervous system a double one. Each eye is an entire body.

2514. In the two eyes the halves of the body have completely separated as entire bodies, and each has attained self-substantiality. Each eye is a free animal in the animal body. Each eye is therefore circumscribed by its own _integument_--is a free animal. It is endowed, like the hand, with omnilateral motion; it has cavities, i. e. its bodily cavities and humours, or inclosed masses--_viscera_.

2515. An organ, which again repeats in its miniature the whole animal itself, of which it is only a part, must necessarily be the highest point unto which an organism can attain. With the eye the organization, and consequently nature, has been concluded.

2516. The eye is a parasitic animal, of the same kind with the animal upon which it exists.

2517. In a certain sense all sensorial organs are parasitic animals in the animal; only they are not all of the same kind with it. No one of the other senses has e. g. repeated _all_ lower systems in itself, and it is therefore to be regarded only as a subordinate or half-animal, which lives upon that which is more perfect.

_Senses of the Sexual Animal._

2518. In essaying to speak concerning the sensorial organs of the sexual animal, we shall only encounter in the latter the emotions of the vegetative senses, and these indeed disposed according to their rank.

2519. The sense of feeling is most perfectly developed in the legs, whereof the pelvis represents the scapula.

2520. The external sexual parts are the analogues of the gustatory sense; the female parts being indeed those of the mouth; the male, which are frequently furnished with bone, of the tongue. The jaws are not repeated in a sexual animal, except in Insects, namely, as the pharyngeal maxillæ.

2521. The analogue of the nose is wholly stunted, and is only left persistent as a trachea or air-tube in the urethra.

2522. In other respects the cavity of the sexual parts is a trunk-cavity "per se," like the thoracic and abdominal; the pelvic cavity contains the viscera of a whole animal.

II.-_PHYSIOLOGY._

2523. Physiology is the doctrine or science which treats of the functions of the animal. Like the organology was, so also must the science of the functions be developed. There will be functions of the whole animal, and of the tissues, systems and organs.

_A._ FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL IN GENERAL.

2524. The first act of the animal is an assimilation to the universe, whereby it also receives or takes up into itself the primary function of the universe. This is the perception of the circumscription and totality in itself, its self-manifestation, the _feeling of self_. The first action of the animal mass is that of self-sensation. Now, through the self-sensation, self-substantiality has been granted.

2525. The animal is consequently a Whole in Singulars only through the feeling of self.

2526. As the universe is only an analysis of the self-consciousness of God; so also can the development of the animal and the formation of its organs, be none other than an analysis of the self-sensation. All other functions (just as all masses are only a metamorphosed nervous mass) are but differently polarized self-sensations, or these as it were dispersed.

2527. The self-sensation of an individual body is not, however, inclosed within itself, like the primary relation of the universe; because it is not the universe, but only a fraction of it, which has sprouted forth like a bud from the great planetary body. The self-sensation is not therefore a simple feeling of self, but a feeling also of something _foreign_ or extraneous, and thus the animal self-sensation becomes, in reference to Nature, an act of discrimination or discernment.

2528. Now, the animal is distinguished only from Nature by the act of being liberated from it. It is therefore comprehended in a constant liberation or severance. The life of the animal continues only by a constantly renewed and indefatigable severance, by a desertion or falling off from Nature.

2529. In so doing, however, it detaches itself from Nature, as being a part thereof; the severance is therefore a conversion of the nature into an animal. In this consists the reciprocal action of both, viz. that the animal is constantly seeking to assimilate the nature unto itself.

2530. The ability or power to assimilate the nature, is called _excitability_.

2531. Excitability is the most general phenomenon of the organic mass, and appertains both to plants and animals.

2532. But in the animal excitability, the free self-sensation, within which a free motion is necessarily inherent, is superadded or originates. This excitability unto motion I call _irritability_.

2533. Thus this irritability belongs only to animals.

2534. Irritability does not depend directly upon motion, but throughout upon sensation. Without sensation no irritability is possible. If the sensation ceases, so also does mobility, or the capacity for motion, cease.

2535. Since irritability originates from the antagonism of the animal with the world; so is it parallel to an antagonism of the heavenly bodies, or to that of sun and planets. The mutual operation of these two heavenly bodies is, however, an interchange of polarity, a polar excitation. The irritability is a polar process; but one which is pure and devoid of material excretions, just as the sun excites the earth without eliciting therein any material change or transition. The animal becomes polarized by the incentive agent or stimulus.

2536. Through the irritability there originates a double polarity in the animal. In the first place one between the world and the animal; in the second, one between the exterior of the animal and its interior. The world-polarity gives the feeling or sensation, the body's polarity the motion.

2537. In the sensation the animal always transcends itself; there is thus only excitability. In the motion the animal abides or remains within itself; but the self-sensation proceeds from both conditions. Accordingly, in self-sensation the world, and the animal within the animal, convene or come together. The animal is itself universe, and it at the same time comprehends the great universe. Now, in both conditions or in both functions has the animal been turned towards the world and also towards itself. In feeling it turns itself towards the world, in order to adopt this spiritually into, or repel this from, itself; in motion it turns itself towards the world, in order to materially adopt or to repel it. In both cases of assumption it turns itself towards itself.

2538. Both these properties belong to the animal body; if individual organs are deficient in them, it happens therefore, from their having superadded or adduced other properties, which are predominant, to the original ones. This is the essence of what is animal in a living body. Thus, if from an animal all the vegetable systems could be subtracted, it would do nothing but feel and move.

_B._ FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL IN SINGULARS.

I. _Functions of the Tissues._

a. FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL TISSUES.

1. _Functions of the Point-Tissue._

2539. The point-tissue is also spiritually represented, and this spiritual manifestation or expression is the stamp or impress of the arrangement of the matter into points.

2540. The point-matter is the matter of sensation; the sensation is, however, imparted by polarization. The act of feeling is a conduction of the polarity from point to point; this is the light-polarity. This light-like polarity transmitted from point to point is sensibility.

2541. The sensibility is not the result of a peculiar nervous fluid, or even of mechanical vibration, &c., of the nerves; but of an antagonism between animal and world, brain and tegument, sun and planet.

2542. The point-tissue is in every respect the æther which has become the mucus, and has in every respect also to act in accordance thereunto.

2543. The sensibility or the nervous power, viewed in relation to the smallness of the body, operates instantaneously upon every spot. It is not first conducted or tardily conveyed hither and thither; but everywhere, where an antagonism, a stimulus, a _planet_ is, there also is the "vis nervosa." Where a planet is, there also is the solar tension.

2544. But abstractedly or ideally considered, the nervous force certainly requires a time to elapse for the propagation of the stimulus, just as the light-tension darts through the æther only in a given time. As light traverses at the rate of 40,000 miles per second, so must the nervous power, if it obey similar laws to those of its prototype, and the length of a man be estimated at 1-5000th of a mile, glide through the human body in 1-200,000,000th of a second, which, "quoad" the phenomenon, cannot, of course, be observed.

2545. Accordingly, it is theoretically certain that the nervous power does not operate with absolute or unconditional velocity. To the validity of this statement, observations of many kinds, especially those made in diseases, and by astronomical computations of the strokes of the chronometer, afford additional evidence.

2546. Thus, for a stimulus impinging upon the brain, to act or be transmitted from thence into the toes, there elapses 1-200,000,000th of a second. In the event of disease, a retardation in the process is conceivable, and may admit even of being observed.

2. _Function of the Globe-tissue._

2547. The dense or solid form is the matter, when it has died away; the function also, or the crystallization, died therein, so soon as the crystal was represented. The office of the bones is only to preserve the counterpoise to the nerve, to supply a limit, and therefore a support to its action, by which means the achievement of the latter first becomes possible.

2548. The business of the bone, is to play an antithetic part to the nerve, and nothing else, or to serve the latter as a "terra firma," upon which it may execute its plans. The bone suffers, and in this consists its office. The other offices of the bone, such as its being the firm and solid framework of the body, its protecting the nervous mass, &c., are subordinate matters, which are at once clearly understood.

3. _Function of the Fibrous-tissue._

2549. There is the active motion. The primary motion is, however, a result of the polar tension induced in the æther by the light. Just as the heat has been produced in the æther by the light-polarity, so has been the animal motion in the fibres by the polarity of the nerves.

2550. Every fibre, when it is in motion, has necessarily two polar extremities. For the fibre stands between the artery which is oxygenous, and the nerve which is basic, or between a zinc and silver pole.

2551. In the conditions of rest the two poles must be neutralized, or, generally speaking, not in existence. This is only possible by disjunction of the galvanic circuit or chain.

2552. Since the artery is constantly operating upon the fibre, but the nerve only, when it has been stimulated; so must this change in the condition of the fibre reside in the change of the nervous influence.

2553. In unirritated conditions the nerve does not act upon the fibre; the latter is not _illuminated_, nor does it stand in a state of tension with the nerve, which is not in itself polar, but is only, when stimulated, a sun towards the fibre, or polar within itself. If the chain be then dissevered, the fibre is in a state of indifference.

2554. Thus, in the event of tension, the nervous extremity of the fibre becomes negative, the arterial extremity positive; both ends necessarily attract each other in order to discharge or unload themselves. This attraction is an _abbreviation_ or contraction.

2555. After the discharge the fibrous extremities are homonymous; they repel each other, and relaxation or extension ensues.

2556. The motion of the fibres is consequently a perfectly galvanic process, devoid of _material_ interference, between nerve, fibre, and blood. The nerve is silver, the artery zinc, and the fibre moist card. All theories of motion based upon swelling of blood, elementary change, and such like causes, are not animal, though organic in character; the former are injections, the latter chemical processes.

2557. Through the fibrous tissue being shortened and elongated, the entire animal is self-displaced.

2558. Through the fibrous tissue the animal _appears_ as animal, through the point-tissue it is (and that in essence) an animal. God is in himself, but he first appears in the world. This elucidates or explains the relation of "noumenon" and "phenomenon."

4. _Function of the Cellular Tissue._

2559. This tissue has no other function than that in the plant. Many saps or juices are effused into the cells. The latter are engaged in constant expansion and contraction, whereby they decompose and propel these juices. They are the proper seat of the nutritive process, since they coincide with the capillary vessels.

2560. But as every rigidification is combined with volatilization, so does a process of evaporation occur in them at the same time.

2561. This process is the property of the teguments or membranes, both of those lining the internal cavities, as also of such as are placed externally.

2562. But the process of evaporation is principally the function of the true skin or corium. As an organ of evaporation the corium is similar to the lung. It is consequently aeriform water, which of necessity constitutes the principal mass of evaporation.

2563. The water is, however, mucous in character, the mucus becomes oxydized in the air, and through this also carbonic acid is formed.

_Heat._

2564. The chief function of the cell-formation is the process of heat. The cell-process and heat-process are one in kind. Heat is the product of the process of condensation and rarefaction, and thus of the nutrition and evaporation, both of which happen in the cells, or, if we please, in the capillary vessels.

2565. In the skin the process of temperature is individualized.

2566. All temperature depends upon the process of condensation and rarefaction. At one time it is the nerves, at another the vessels, anon, external influences, which alter or modify it. Animal heat, like the cosmic heat, has been produced by change of the fixation. This change, however, takes place principally in the nutrition and evaporation.

2567. The fat is the "residuum" or the antagonism of the process of evaporation or water-formation. It is therefore deposited everywhere on the water-organs, beneath the integument, along the intestine and the vessels, around the kidneys, and so on.

2568. It is, like the adipocire, a product of the aqueous decomposition. On this account it is subservient to the process of temperature. It is the only isolator of heat, while all other animal bodies are conductors.

II. _Functions of the Systems._

2569. The functions do not concern the whole body, but only its principal parts.

a. VEGETABLE FUNCTIONS.

2570. The vegetative functions are matter-changing processes, which, consequently, correspond directly to the chemical processes, or are rather of one kind with these, but altered by organic elemental bodies.

1. _Functions of the Intestinal System._

2571. The general function of the integument consists in the secretion of juices, of which there are principally two kinds, the general and special.

2572. The general intestinal juice is mucus; it acts by rarefying.

2573. The gastric juice is of an aqueous, mucous, and acid nature. It acts as an acid and is endowed with chemically solvent properties.

2574. The bile is of a basic, inflammable, alkaline nature. It acts also chemically by analysing and precipitating.

2575. The saliva is the gastric juice of the head. It is a juice _secreted_ under the influence of the sensibility, and is on that account indifferencing, and nullifying in its effects; it is the highest poison.

2576. As the indifferent saliva precedes the gastric juice, so does the indifferent pancreatic fluid the bile.

2577. The proper function of the intestinal system is the digestion with all its divisions. There is an animal and a vegetative, or oral and abdominal digestion.

a. _Oral Digestion._

2578. Oral digestion is a mortifying or putting to death of the food.

2579. Since what is organic only serves as aliment for the animal, but nothing can be assimilated to the latter, without its having been previously reduced to the original condition of Infusoria, so also must the first act of the digestive process depend upon this, or converting the organic into primary organic bodies.

2580. This reduction to the primary condition is a putting to death of the organic individual. Organisms only which have been killed, can be converted into infusorial matter, and are then nutriment for the animal. The first act of digestion is consequently an act of putting to death.

2581. The act of killing consists of two moments, the mechanical and dynamical, or in lacerating and poisoning.

_Laceration._

2582. The mechanical act of putting to death commences with the search after nutriment, and thus with the movement of the feet; to this succeeds the prehension, or seizure with the claws or hands.

2583. This motion of the limbs is then repeated in the cephalic members, or the jaws.

2584. The seizure of the food with the cephalic arms or jaws, is the infliction of a wound commensurate with the position and form of the teeth. The teeth are digits of the cephalic limbs, or being devoid of any fleshy layer, claws. A gripe with such digits is in itself the infliction of a wound. For, in order that the food be grasped with only sufficient firmness to admit of its being drawn into the mouth, the sharp digital points of the mouth, i. e. the teeth, must make an incision therein.

2585. To seize, bite, wound, and kill, is in an animal one and the same act. For, so soon as the food or prey is seized, and consequently wounded, it is drawn deeper into the mouth, and therefore a new grasp and bite is essayed.

2586. Upon this the food is twirled about in the mouth by the muscles, or is chewed, whereby the parts are separated into mechanical atoms.

_Poisoning._

2587. Mechanical atoms are, however, not yet dead, because the vital polarity is not extinguished. It is requisite for a dynamic act, which suppresses all galvanism, to operate upon them.

2588. As this act of killing has directly for its object the death of the Organic and that alone, so is it a venenation or _process of poisoning_. To poison is not merely a chemical act, but one having for its immediate purpose, to separate the connexion of the organic atoms.

2589. The first act performed by the animal is that of poisoning.

2590. Poisoning, as being a direct aggression upon and destruction of life, is a destruction of the galvanic process. Now, the galvanic process is destroyed by suppression, destruction, and separation of its poles. The demolition of poles is a _polar equilibration_. Poisoning is equilibration of poles on the galvanic organism, or their neutralization.

2591. The primary change of poles is, however, in the blood. Poisoning is a balancing of the blood-poles.

2592. Indifferent blood is no longer blood, but chyle or infusorial primary mass.

2593. The nutritive fluid or chyle is poisoned organic substance. There is no aliment except what is wrought by poison.

2594. The poisoning of the aliments must take place through the medium of their blood, or their sap. If poison therefore does not get into the blood, the death does not ensue. The digestive juice is poison only for the blood, but not for the other systems.

2595. Chemical bodies which induce death, act by destruction of the bodies themselves, not merely by their neutralization or excessive polarization. They do not operate very differently from iron when in a state of red heat. Such is the case with sulphuric acid, nitric acid, alkalies and arsenic.

2596. Now, if these bodies be called poisons, there are thus three kinds of poisons, mineral or chemical, vegetable and animal poisons.

2597. The chemical poisons destroy the mass; they convert the Organic into minerals.

2598. Vegetable poisons reduce the animal to the plant; they do not effect the destruction of the mass in a general sense, but only that which is purely animal, or the nervous system--they are nervous poisons.

2599. The animal poisons destroy what is vegetable in the animal, or the galvanic process--are blood-poisons.

2600. _The saliva is the digestive poison._

2601. The saliva is not present, in order to macerate, and so prepare the dry aliments for digestion, but to _poison_ them. Everything else is only a subordinate operation. Now, the process of poisoning takes place only in the blood. The saliva does not act without inflicting a wound.

2602. Strictly regarded, all saliva is poison. There are examples of the saliva of birds, and even of men when inflamed with passion, having acted as poison.

2603. All other animal poisons, contagious principles or miasmata, are analogous to the saliva, being partial salivæ, partial poisons. Diseases of the skin produce tegumentary poisons or salivæ; glandular diseases, glandular poisons; nervous diseases, nervous poisons; diseases of the lungs, pulmonary poisons. The saliva is the blood-poison; the hydrocyanic acid, the nervous poison.

2604. During mastication saliva imbues every atom of the food, whereby the mass is throughout neutralized, or annulled.

_Docimasy or Testing._

2605. The oral digestion or that of the mouth cannot, however, occur by itself, without its being a nervous process also. The intestinal function taken up into the nervous system is the _taste_.

2606. Taste is the chemism resident in the head, the digestion in the nerves. Taste therefore happens according to the theory of the digestion or the chemism.

2607. The lowest element of the chemism is the water, the highest repetition whereof in the earth is--the salt. The former is therefore the object of abdominal digestion, the latter of nervous digestion. To taste is to digest salt. In order to taste the salt, every part of the food must be brought in contact with the tongue; this is only possible through comminution of the aliment by means of the teeth. The mastication dissolves the aliments mechanically into atoms, just as digestion will resolve them chemically into "infusoria."

2608. That which should be digestible, must have a saline character, must be soluble. The tongue is accordingly the test-organ of the digestive process.

_Deglutition._

2609. At first the tongue tastes only with its apex or tip; but after the salts which operate upon the tip are neutralized and examined, the tongue will also taste with its root, the two extremities of the tongue and their gustatory sensations being thus mutually opposed. It therefore takes the morsel upon the root and presses it against the palate, whereby the pharyngeal muscles clasp and swallow it.

2610. In deglutition the object of the tongue is not to give over or surrender the morsel to the pharynx, but to enjoy it "per se." During this fruition, however, it is robbed of it. Deglutition is therefore a result of an undesigned mechanical contrivance. Each organ works for the other, while fancying that it works for itself, which again it actually does, while it reaps the enjoyment so derived. Has the tongue finished tasting the food, then the pharynx obtains it involuntarily.

2611. To the saliva, and thus to a morsel, the acidulous gastric juice is polarwise related; both therefore seek to unite, and with this their organs also, namely, pharynx and stomach. The stomach obtains the preponderance, because it is acidulous; the pharynx moves towards it and with it also the morsel.

_Rumination._

2612. If the food, when received into the stomach, continue acid by virtue of its nature, or from not having been properly chewed and imbued with saliva and so neutralized, it is then homonymous with the gastric juice. The stomach therefore seeks to neutralize it, by restoring it again to the action of the saliva.

2613. Acid aliments cause vomiting. Grass which has not been masticated, and therefore enters acid or non-killed, and susceptible of fermentation, into the stomach, is regularly brought back into the mouth, and to the saliva, i. e. is ruminated or rechewed.

2614. Rumination is a regular act of vomiting, which has originated from the antagonism of the saliva and gastric juice and from the acid nature of the morsel.

b. _Intestinal Digestion._

2615. The intestinal digestion is the perfect chemical process taken up along with all its moments into the animal.

_Gastric Digestion._

2616. The stomach exercises by means of the spleen the oxydizing process of the intestine, the solvent function, and thus the action of the water. The gastric juice is related to the food, like water is to earth. The gastric digestion is liquefaction, unto which oxydation makes the preliminary step.

2617. Through the process of liquefaction, the poles are only potentially augmented, but are not dissevered, nor new substances formed. The gastric digestion creates no new bodies, but only mixes the old in the most homogeneous and intimate manner with each other.

2618. The gastric digestion is an animal process of fermentation. In deranged states of the stomach there is therefore a propensity to acid eructation, development of carbonic acid, and even formation of sugar.

2619. This digestion consequently reduces the (animal) food to the signification of the plant. Gastric digestion is a process of vegetable germination. The salivary process is a reduction to the animal death, digestion a reduction of this dead something itself to a lower kingdom.

2620. The gastric juice alone, like an acid, effects the solution of the aliment; with this, the movement of the gastric walls, which only tends to produce an easier mixture of the alimentary particles, having nothing to do.

_Hunger._

2621. Through the digestive process the gastric juice is consumed by the food, and the stomach deoxydized. If there is a deficiency of dephlegmatizing and deoxydizing aliments, then the peroxydation of the stomach must produce a feeling--called appetite. If this be not appeased, the oxygenic tension in the stomach is elevated or increased, and then begins to become unpleasant; this is _Hunger_.

2622. Here the feeling of the stomach's peroxydation is an obstructed process of fermentation, dependent upon want of food and alkaline principles.

_Thirst._

2623. The feeling of the reverse condition to the above is _Thirst_. It originates through a too rapid deoxydation of the stomach, through deglutition of the gastric juice on account of an excess of food. But it may also originate from a deficiency of gastric juice, or from an alkaline tendency in the latter; just as hunger resulted from a superabundance of gastric juice, or a disposition to form acids.

2624. Thirst is the feeling of too powerful a digestion, or of too rapid fermentation, whereby the product or leaven of the latter becomes, as it were, bankrupt; upon this the blood flows in greater quantity, in order to secrete the gastric juice; the arterial nature becomes elevated, and finally, an inflammatory condition, associated with a sense of dryness, originates, and is propagated as far as the mouth.

2625. Thirst and heat rank, like hunger and cold, parallel to each other. The feeling of dryness appears as heat, that of moisture, as cold. Cold therefore at once extinguishes or quenches the thirst; but produces hunger, which again is mitigated by heat.

_Biliary Digestion._

2626. The stomach is the pulmonic intestine; the duodenum, through its combination with the liver, is the vascular intestine, having a predominant venous character; or the one is the arteriose, the other the venous stomach.