Chapter XXIII: Part III: Biology--Of the Whole in Singulars (10)

2627. The gastric digestion has reduced the food to the state of a vegetable; but this does not yet suffice for it to become a nutritive matter, namely, a new organism. As the primary organism originates, so also must the body originate in the process of nutrition, and thus from the element of the Organic. Now, this primitive matter or element is the mucus, the "infusorium." There is still therefore a process necessary to redissolve the vegetable and convert it into protoplasma or primary mucus.

2628. This, however, occurs only through the process of putrefaction being wrought in the food. This process is not simple solution, but decomposition, or separation of the constituent parts. The acid vegetable parts, which had been active through the process of fermentation, must be therefore decomposed, and in such wise, indeed, that what is mucous shall be separated from them.

2629. This separation or analysis takes place by means of the _Bile_, which combines with the acid of the chyme.

2630. The biliary digestion is an alkalizing or saponaceous process. Through it the chyme becomes separated into nutritive juice or chyle, and into excrement.

2631. The excrement is what is vegetable, or the product of fermentation combined with the bile. The chyle is what is infusorial, or the product of decomposition. Nutrition therefore begins anew. Its process is a "generatio originaria."

2632. In digestion the processes of both organic kingdoms, namely, the fermentative and putrefactive, are repeated.

_Absorption._

In the intestine, not merely lung and vascular system, have been represented, but also the integument or organ of absorption.

2633. After the animal food has been reduced to the vegetable, and this again to the infusorial state, it can be taken up by the body. It now becomes absorbed in the small intestine. The small intestine is the tegumentary system, or the root-bark.

2634. The chyliferous or lacteal vessels stand in antagonism with the lung, or the skin as being the original respiratory organ. It is only, therefore, the infusorial chyle that has been absorbed, not the excrement, because between the latter, as the product of oxydation, and the lacteal vessels, repulsion takes place. The chyle, having been absorbed, enters into the thoracic duct, and from thence into the lungs.

_Evacuation._

2635. Through the absorption of what is fluid, that which is excrementitious becomes more solid, and is thus given over or transferred into the vegetable, sexual, or large intestine.

2636. The excrement is now found in another, i. e. in a lower, or vegetable animal. It therefore obtains the direction of all sexual secretions; it is thrown out or ejected, and in a reverse direction, because the anus is the sexual mouth.

2637. Digestion is thus through all predicaments, from its incipient dealings with the highest life unto the plant, and from this to the mucous globule, a thorough process of putting to death.

2638. The nutritive will be through all predicaments, from the infusorium to the plant and to the animal, a thoroughly vivifying or life-inspiring process. Digestion is descension, nutrition is ascension.

2. _Functions of the Respiratory System._

2639. The branchiæ and lungs are the air-organ of the animal, the foliage. The animal, like the vegetable foliage, is oxydized from water or air, by which means the animal sap, which hitherto is only a root-sap, becomes differenced into an aerial sap.

2640. No animal can live without oxygen gas, because the air is the condition of the galvanic process.

2641. The oxygen passes over materially into the blood or the chyle. Beyond this it is an indifferent matter for physiology, whether the blood simply derives the positive tension from the air, or combines the positive oxygen materially with itself. In both cases the same heterogeneity originates. Were oxygen, however, not to enter the body through the lung, it could not then be seen, whence its ingress might be effected. In other respects, every change of matters is established with material combinations and separations.

2642. The carbonic acid of the respiratory process may originate accidentally, as when it is formed on the integument. In so far is the expiration one and the same with the evaporation.

2643. The chyle ascends directly from the small intestine into the leaf-fabric, or into the lung. Both organs are to be compared with an entire plant, whereof the intestine is the root, the lymphatic vessels the stem, the lung the leaf-fabric or foliage.

2644. The chyle moves in the lymphatic vessels like the vegetable sap, and thus by polar tension between lung and intestine. Lung and intestine have been diametrically opposed. The conductors of the antagonism are the lymphatic vessels.

2645. The lymphatic vessels do not absorb by virtue of their own contractility, nor by open ends; but by physical pores like the cells of plants.

2646. It is the chyle, which is oxydized in the lung; the venous blood is a subordinate object.

2647. Through the oxydation it becomes coloured like the vegetable sap does in a leaf. But the latter sap obtains only the colour of the terrestrial oxydation, of the terrestrial oxyde or the water, and becomes green; while the chyle gains the colour of the cosmic oxyde, or the fire, and becomes red. The red, fire-coloured sap is the blood. The function of the lungs is consequently a formation of blood.

2648. The blood is an infusorial, a green mucous sap, which has been elevated to what is aerial. The blood consists of aerated Infusoria--blood-globules. These are the red substance of the blood. In the lower animals only, where the blood, like the body, contains but few blood-globules, is it colourless.

2649. Through the respiration an electrical difference enters the blood, whereby it becomes separated into several substances.

2650. The _water_ in the chyle is the inorganic menstruum, wherein the mucus, as being a fundamental matter of the vegetable sap, has been dissolved. Through the digestion the mucus becomes animal--_gelatine_.

2651. The gelatine is the basi-constituent part of the chyle, being a product of the digestion or the root-process. Gelatine is the vegetable mucus repeated and ennobled in an animal. This ennobling took place through the digestion.

2652. "En route" too, the chyle mixes with the nervous blood, and already undergoes a degree of oxydation, whereby the gelatine becomes converted into albuminous matter.

2653. Through the respiration gelatine and albumen are elevated to aerial importance, and still more oxydized; by this means the albuminous matter becomes elevated, and passes over into _fibrine_. The fibrine is the last product of respiration. Fibrine is the starch-meal in an animal.

2654. The electric duplicity, induced in the blood by the process of respiration, exists accordingly between fibrine and gelatine, while the albumen constitutes or forms the indifference. The fibrine is repelled from the lung, because they are both homonymous; it is the oxydized gelatine. From its communicating its polarity to the whole mass of blood, this also is repelled from the lungs.

3. _Functions of the Vascular System._

2655. The capillary vessels of the body range opposite to those of the lungs, just as the biliary does to the splenic stomach, as alkali to acid, as precipitant and secernent to what is non-separated.

2656. The capillary vessels therefore attract the pulmonary blood, separate it, secrete and form new constituent parts; and then, after it has become homonymous, they repel it back again towards the lungs.

2657. The circulation only subsists through the polarity which exists between lung and capillary vessels, between lung and body, between oxydation and reduction, combination and separation.

2658. If the intestine and body be the root, the lung the foliage, so is the lymphatic and vascular system the stem, in which the most perfect substances have been formed. In the circulation the matters for the animal systems must have been fully formed, such as for the bones, the lime; for the muscles, the iron; for the nerve, the albumen.

2659. The liver is the principal organ of the circulation. There also must one principal preparation of the blood take place. On account of its parallelism with the brain, the condition probably resides in it that conduces to formation of the albumen, namely, of the Indifferent, which is the nutritive matter of the nervous mass.

2660. In the vegetable sphere of life there are, in addition to the liver, but two mutually distinct excretory organs, namely, the intestine and the skin.

2661. In the mucous secretion of the intestine the condition, requisite to the formation of phosphate of _lime_ for the bones, probably resides.

2662. In like manner in the formation of the carbonic acid and the water in the integument, the basis for the formation of phosphate of iron for the muscles may reside. In the circulation the intestine would thus be the lime-, the skin the iron-, and the liver the medulla-forming organ.

2663. The two extremes of the circulation, or intestine and lung, form gelatine and fibrine; the circulation itself forms the purely animal matter. Out of the integument and lung grows the muscle, from the intestine the bone and gelatine, out of the liver the nerve. Muscle is integument and air, bone is intestine and chyle, brain is liver and blood. Thus each has a function that is peculiar to it; each organ has its business to perform in the diffuse fabric of the animal body.

2664. Through this variety or change of the offices, the circulation first becomes possible.

2665. If the secernent process be therefore suppressed, the animal then dies as rapidly as if it had been suffocated. It is a suffocation of the opposed pole. Query? does not many a fit of apoplexy depend upon this?

2666. The circulation has consequently two factors, the lung as oxygen-pole, the capillary vessels of the body as hydrogen-pole, the blood as the indifferent water. The circulation is a galvanic process.

2667. In all extremities of the body the arteriose blood becomes deoxydized, decomposed; it is therefore basic and homonymous with the capillary vessels, so that it is consequently repelled, and driven back into the veins.

2668. It can, however, flow nowhere else than to the lung, because there resides its opposite pole. Being again oxydized in, it becomes homonymous to, the lung, is repelled by it, and again attracted by the capillary vessels of the body.

2669. The circulation is therefore a result of dynamic forces, not of mechanical functions. It would occur, were the vessels to be glass tubes.

2670. The pulsation of the heart is not a cause of the circulation, but inversely rather, its consequence or effect.

2671. In the circulation the whole organism, or intestine, lung and integument, is combined. It is therefore the fundamental system, which includes the whole mass of the body.

b. FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL SYSTEMS.

1. _Of the Osseous System._

2672. The functions of the osseous system are simply mechanical relations, such as solidity, form and motion.

2673. The motion of the joints presents to our notice interesting relations, especially in reference to the motion of the vertebræ, ribs, limbs and jaws upon each other, but these could not be here treated of in detail.

2674. The acts of swimming, creeping, standing, walking, running, leaping, climbing, and flying, do not exhibit simply mechanical, but truly philosophical moments.

a. _Bodily Motion._

2675. Swimming can take place through simple contraction of the body, without locomotive members. It is the continuation of the vesicle's first process of origination; as in the Infusoria and Polyps. In the Worms and Serpents it is effected by an undulating motion of the body, whereby the water is struck with oblique surfaces; there it is fibrous motion. In the Holothuriæ and many aquatic larvæ, it is a propulsion, effected by expelling water from the anus, and thus by squirts, there being consequently contraction of the body or arteriose straitening of the sphincter muscles. In Fishes, swimming is a rowing or remigial stroke, produced by lever-motion, together with the oblique slap made by their tail.

2676. Creeping is either a shortening of the body by fibrous motion, as in the Snails, or an undulatory motion, as in the Serpents.

b. _Pedal Motion._

2677. Standing is the position of a lever "in equilibrio," the creation of the proper centre of gravity.

2678. Walking or running is an exchange or alternation of the equilibrium, a combination of standing and creeping.

2679. Leaping or hopping is a flight with the feet.

2680. Climbing is an use of the feet as hands.

c. _Alary Motion._

2681. Flying is lever-swimming in the air. It takes place by means of aerial branchiæ, namely, the wings in Insects, and by the thoracic extremities in Birds, which are also none other than animal branchiæ.

2682. Soaring is creeping in the air.

2683. Hovering is standing in the air.

2684. Pouncing is hopping in the air.

2685. Diving is hopping in the water.

2. _Functions of the Muscular System._

2686. The muscular system performs, in an active sense, what the osseous system does in a passive. The strength or power of the muscles, and their leverage attachment, is here especially to be regarded. The contraction of the fibres is a _charging_, by nerves and blood, of the two fibre-poles.

2687. The fibres are charged by the air. It is, in the most general sense, the respiratory vessels by which the muscle is charged. This is strictly the case in Insects, where the tracheæ traverse all the limbs, and directly conduct to the flesh the polarity of the air. In animals, however, with a closed circulation, the arteries undertake the conveyance of air upon the blood, and it is then the latter fluid which streams into the muscles in order to charge them.

2688. Thus if an artery be ligatured, the limb is crippled or lamed. The artery, however, imparts only the positive pole, and consequently of itself produces no shortening or contraction of the fibres. The oxydation takes place at the lower end of the muscle; here, therefore, the latter passes over into tendon.

2689. The nerve is the second condition of the muscular contraction, since it evokes in the fibre the negative pole. Thus if a nerve be ligatured, the limb is likewise motionless.

2690. If the poles be brought by contraction into close approximation, the fibres must re-extend, so soon as the influence of the blood or the nerve ceases.

2691. Now since the blood is constantly streaming in, the reason for the muscular rest must reside in the nerves. The rationale of voluntary motion is consequently the nerve. The relaxation or extension is an unloading of the fibres.

2692. The muscular motion is an electrical process, a motion of blood in the Solid.

2693. Through the polarization of the fibres the muscle is formed from the arteries. The muscle is therefore an individual biconical piece of fibre, having unequal cones. Oxydation takes place at the muscular extremity; here, therefore, originates the sinew or tendon.

2694. A fleshy cyst--or heart--which includes an osseous cyst, must subdivide into several fibrous cones or muscles. One reason of this is the "fore and aft," another is the quantity of the essential vascular branches.

2695. The muscle contracts upon application only of a stimulus.

2696. Every stimulus induces motion only as a result of polar excitation. Every stimulus polarizes; for even the gentlest contact is like the friction, and produces electrical antagonism. It therefore amounts to the same, whatever stimuli, whether mechanical, chemical, or spiritual, have been applied to the muscle. One acts like the other.

2697. If no motion supervene upon, or is even suppressed by, the contact of a body, the nature of the body must then be _indifferencing_.

2698. Relaxing, laming, life-destroying matters, are indifferencing, or cause a suppression of the poles.

2699. Overcharging principles, e. g. lightning or strong electric sparks may also produce relaxation. These destroy the function of the fibres, and act therefore worse than the in differencing matters.

3. _Functions of the Nervous System._

2700. The function of the point-substance is also that of the nervous system, for this is only the point-substance, fashioned and arranged into stalk and branches.

2701. But even on this account the nervous tension proceeds only according to a determinate line, while before it penetrated through the whole mass.

2702. The nervous tension takes place in a nervous system only between a special organ and the nervous centre.

2703. In itself the nervous system is an Indifference, and such then are all the organs upon which it acts, when regarded in reference to this operation; they might, through other functions, be polar.

2704. The nervous system becomes differential either through its two kinds of substances, or through extraneous influence; in the first case it thinks or moves, in the second it feels.

2705. Sensation is in the nervous what motion is in the fibrous system, namely, a polar condition, in which the two ends have a tendency to come together, in order to discharge or unload.

2706. In the sensation the extremity of the nerves strives to approach that of the brain; it is therefore a contractile effort in the nerves, like motion is in the muscular fibre. Juxta-posited granules could not, however, shorten; therefore, the already calculated polarity courses over them.

2707. All external stimuli act upon the nerves and polarize them, but not the muscular fibres.

2708. The fibre becomes directly polarized only through the internal stimuli, or by the blood, galvanic tension, &c.

2709. The most general function of the nervous system consists in its assuming polarity from the world, and imparting this to other systems, apart namely, from the alternate operation of its two substances.

_Nervous and Motor System._

2710. The first system is that of motion. The tranquil presence of the nerve in the fibre produces indifference in the latter; so that it has no susceptibility for the polarization that is effected by the artery. Doubtless the arterial blood passes, for the most part, close by the fibre through other capillary vessels.

2711. But if the nerve be polarized it is then basic, negative, and enters into opposition with the arterial blood, which now streams into the capillary vessels of the fibre, and renders the two ends of the latter heterogeneous.

2712. Thus, if the nerve be cut across, it remains always indifferent, and no motion can any longer ensue. But this does ensue so soon as the nerve is galvanized. A proof that the nervous influence is homologous to the galvanic tension.

2713. If the nerve becomes involuntarily negative, then originates spasm.

2714. If the nerve continue morbidly indifferent, then paralysis originates.

_Nervous and Vegetative Systems._

2715. The second great system is the tegumentary formation. In this too its ordinary functions occur, such as secretion, evaporation, nutrition, elevation or depression of heat without nervous influence; or they occur while the nerve only acts indifferently.

2716. But if it acts by polarizing, as in the muscular motion, then the tegumentary processes are at once changed. What is material becomes extinguished, and the simply Irritable is manifested in the cells, capillary vessels, and so on.

2717. The process of temperature becomes thereby instantly changed, because the decomposition is changed. The heat is increased by the rapid suppression of the evaporation; it is diminished by the rapid increase of the latter.

2718. The art and manner in which the nerves act upon what is vegetable, is consequently an elevation of this Vegetable to what is animal. It must resign its processes, and simply undertake those of motion. Exactly the same takes place in the secernent organs. They perform their offices themselves through the galvanic tension of the vessels. But if the nerve act upon them they secrete more powerfully, and exactly from the same cause whereby the muscle is self-moved. Thus, if the nerve operate feebly, whereby it is in an irritable state, or if its action be wholly withdrawn, then the secretion will become less.

2719. The more irritable the nerves are, by so much the more animal does the vegetable organism, or the splanchnic system, therefore become; so much the less is it produced on the mass.

2720. Irritable animals and men are therefore meagre or lean. The two cases are uniformly related to each other. Lean men are irritable, not perhaps because the nervous ends are not covered with fat, such as there might be over the integument, the ear, the tongue, nose, &c., but, because where the nutritive process is inactive, what is animal necessarily preponderates. There are consequently three kinds of nervous actions, or phenomena, though all nervous activity in entire systems is similar, or but one. The difference is only derived from the organ upon which the nerves act. There are, consequently, no special nerves of sensation, motion and secretion; or such, forsooth, as have only one of these offices to take care of. Thus, were a nerve of sensation to be prolonged or drawn over a muscle, it would excite motion, and in the case of the liver, secrete bile, &c.

_Mesmerism._

2721. When the sensibility mounts to the highest degree, each mass-function will then almost cease, and the organs of sense feel the weakest operation of the stimulus.

2722. Since every stimulation is a polarizing act, and each body is in polar activity towards the other at every conceivable distance, so may an extremely irritable nervous system also perceive the feeblest polarizations.

2723. The eye perceives the polarization at a remote distance from the body whence it proceeds.

2724. In hearing the vibrating body still indeed acts directly upon the ear through the vibrations of air. But a finer, i. e. more irritable ear, hears farther than one that is more dull.

2725. With an elevated sensibility the other systems also may therefore perceive the polarization of the bodies, without coming into contact with them.

2726. To perceive objects in the distance, i. e. merely their polar influence, is called _Mesmerism_, or animal magnetism.

2727. Now, if it is once possible for other senses besides that of sight to extend their perception into remote space, it no longer matters as to the magnitude of the latter. A feebly charged electrical machine only attracts bodies that are near, one strongly loaded, those which are more remote; such is the case too with weak and strong magnets.

2728. The integument at once perceives electrified surfaces at certain distances; now, as every surface appears electric to the integument, so must the latter, if its sensibility is very much elevated, perceive something of that sort in every proportionate distance.

2729. But homologous polarities only act upon each other, and therefore traverse thoroughly through heterologous bodies. Thus the magnet attracts the iron filings through the table-board, unhindered by the interposed wood, and without any regard being paid to this, or its being even perceived.

2730. The senses may therefore perceive their homologous polarities through other bodies, walls, and such like. By virtue of their perception, they stand in relation to them.

2731. To the very sensible nervous system the vegetable system and its impulse is a foreign object, which detaches itself from the above system, just as the objects of sense have done from the sensorial organs. The vegetable, or in general the material body, appears therefore to the mesmerized like a strange world--they see their own organs--are _clair-voyants_. Mesmerism therefore comprises nothing which could contradict physiology.

_Vegetative Nerves._

2732. The splanchnic or visceral nerves are also distinguished from the animal by their being in a constant state of tension, and hence keeping the processes of their system in constant repair.

2733. The rationale of this resides in the two nervous substances having separated into ganglia and plexuses.

2734. This also serves to explain another phenomenon, viz. that the nerves indeed, but never the brain, attain to perfect rest; because the former is without ganglionic or cortical substance, the latter is throughout surrounded, and obviously interwoven, by it.

2735. Therein lies the reason why the viscera do not sleep.

_Sleep._

2736. The condition of the nervous system, as hitherto represented, is called that of being awake. It is the interlude played by the nerves with the world, and with the animal body.

2737. When in a state of health the first interlude ceases, then the other also is over or past. The world-nerves, however, operate only upon the animal systems, upon the senses and the motion of the muscles; it could therefore be these only wherein the nervous function, in compliance with this cessation, is suppressed. Now, muscular rest originates through suppression of the tension between nerve and muscle. In sleep this rest is also derived from the same means.

2738. The tension between nerve and muscle can only cease, if the tension also between the termination of the brain and nerves be suppressed. We are now reduced simply to the consideration of the nervous system, and may, in treating of sleep, pay no attention to the muscular system.

2739. But whence comes the tension in the motor nerves? Obviously only from the cerebral tension. This can originate only in two ways; either through the special organization of the brain, one or the other substance being preponderant, or through the influence of external stimuli.

2740. The encephalic substance becomes more potent than usual, if by rest the cortical substance becomes more arteriose in character. This tension is communicated to all the nerves, sensitive as well as motor, and continues in their interlude with the world and the motor system.

2741. If this encephalic tension is not too potent, it remains only in the brain, without the ability to polarize the nerves also. It then only produces cerebral phenomena, thoughts or _dreams_.

2742. Dreaming is an encephalic tension excited by the organization, not by the world.

2743. Dreaming is the first step in the liberation of the animal from the vegetable system--it is the first step towards mesmerism.

2744. In a perfect or middling state of health, where the nervous is not very much separated from the tegumentary system, we do not dream.

2745. In a healthy condition an external stimulus would be, consequently, the only cause of waking, did not the long repose bestow a preponderating influence upon the cortical substance. Dreams therefore happen in the morning.

2746. Waking is the intercourse with the world, not with self. If one wakes also from intercourse with self, still the former is synchronous and coexciting.

2747. Thus, if intercourse with the world ceases, sleep originates. If the vegetable intercourse with it also ceases, then death originates. Waking is "consensus" with the world.

2748. Sleep is a death of the _animal_ systems.

2749. Every awaking is a resurrection from death, a new sympathizing with the vegetal body, from which the animal body again originates.

2750. As the animal originally took its rise from, and only through the plant, so also is this repeated in an individual. The plant is the ever-living, ever-verdant, or green, out of which the animal daily sprouts forth as a blossom.

2751. The animal intercourse with the world is also interrupted in two ways, and there are therefore two modes of falling asleep.

2752. The first cause resides in the want of stimulus. The nerves of the senses are not polar, do not therefore excite the brain, nor does this again affect the motor system. The muscle therefore arrives at a state of non-tension; it becomes relaxed, and along with it necessarily the organs of sense, which are thrown into activity by muscular motion. The arms and fingers, whose business is to touch, sink down; the feet which move, and thereby warm and animate the body, are slackened and bent together; the body is in the recumbent posture; the eyelids drop, the light no longer plays upon the visual organs, the external and internal auditory muscles flag also, and the sound is no longer borne upon the ear. Now also does the tension of the senses with the brain cease, and with it the sensation--there is sleep.

2753. This sleep arising from want of stimulus is a faint sleep, and rendered useless by dreams. For there is actually no cause present why the encephalic tension should entirely cease. Men, who do not fall asleep through fatigue, but from want of work, sleep restlessly, awake easily, and again readily fall asleep. Their life is dreaming.

2754. The other cause of the polar suppression in the nerves is like that of the extension of the muscles, or their falling to sleep; it is thus the discharge of the too strongly excited poles. With too high a degree of fibrous tension, which also originates through too long a continuance of the tension, the fibre is placed in a state of activity, which consists in the antagonism being balanced by approximation of the ends. Were nerves, when greatly tensed, capable of being shortened, they would also discharge themselves, and come at least for one instant to rest--they would _sleep_.

2755. The falling asleep of the fibre is its sleep, though it also does not last long. So is the expansion of the heart its sleep, so is expiration the sleep of the thorax.

2756. In all polarizable organs there is a change or alternation of waking and sleeping, which endures a longer and shorter time. This periodicity depends upon the energy of the polar influence, and upon the size and susceptibility of the substance.

2757. Every substance has its own periods of waking and sleeping, of action and repose. The pulse sleeps shorter than the breathing; this again shorter than being hungry; this again for a briefer time than the sexual function.

2758. There are organs, or systems, which are nearly always in a state of slumber, e. g. the osseous system, because in it the polarity is extinguished. It is only in states of inflammation that it wakes up. Others scarcely ever slumber, e. g. the cellular system, because in it indeed no pole is yet fixed, and in the alternation of poles its life consists.

2759. There is a similar change of poles in a nervous system, and it indeed halts or stops for a middling time. Through the persistent influence of the external world, the nerves of the senses are thrown into such a state of tension with the brain, that blood cannot flow thither in sufficient quantity, in order to maintain the two cerebral substances in mutual antagonism. Brain and nerves become therefore indifferent; muscles and sensorial organs lose their polarizability, and their intercourse ceases with the nerves as well as the world. The brain, and everything else, has now been discharged, and a deep sleep without dreams, an animal death, ensues.

2760. It has been arbitrarily asserted, that no sleep is possible without dreams, but for this statement there are no existing grounds. Whence should the dream come if there is no tension in the brain, or if it has previously undergone sufficient self-exhaustion?

_Periodicity._

2761. The sleep of the nerves ranges parallel with that of the planet. It might be said that such was the case from habit or custom, but it is, properly speaking, dependent upon a parallel process of organizing that occurs at the origination of the animal. The matter stands thus: the germ originates in the morning; until evening stimuli act upon and polarize it: in the evening they cease, and with them the tension. The muscles relax upon every movement, and rest necessarily follows in the manner above delineated. With to-morrow's morn the world again acts until evening upon the germ; it wakes up, and the same course of events happens as on the first day. Finally the substance becomes organized according to this periodicity; it becomes, forsooth, not more energetic than is necessary in order to admit or receive a charge of one day; towards evening it is exhausted, is neutral, and rejoices with the relaxation of the muscles, that the world no longer acts upon its frame.

2762. Thus, we may attribute this phenomenon both to custom and synchronous formation; nevertheless one ought not to forget that the organic formation is a metatype, or has been imitated from something that has gone before, and that consequently the law of periodicity has not been bestowed upon both at the same time, but first of all unto nature, and through this to the body, which is its image or likeness.

2763. The nervous periodicity ranges in accordance with the periodicity of the light, or is thus parallel with its archetype, and consequently with the day and night. Day is the waking, night the sleeping of nature. But the animal has originated in and by this alternating change of nature. It is spiritually, as well as corporeally, nature's likeness.

2764. The sexual function in a perfect animal, as in Man, has been adapted to the periods of the year; in other animals other natural periods exert their sway. Animals are commonly pregnant by the month, e. g. for one, two, four, five months, &c. The human species requires three quarters of a year for pregnancy, one quarter for giving suck to the babe, and then it can again conceive. Pregnancy thus lasts a year, and has been based in the sun.

2765. If the female does not become pregnant, the sexual passion, or instinct, is repeated at the expiration of a month. It sleeps about one month, and then awakes for some days. The periodicity may be divided into vegetative and animal, thus,--

a. Animal = _World-periodicity._

1. Sleep = _Rotation of the Earth._
2. Menstruation = _Lunar revolution._
3. Pregnancy = _Solar revolution._

b. Vegetal = _Earth-periodicity._

1. Digestion = _Water, Ebb and Flow._
2. Respiration = _Air, Electricity._
3. Pulse = _Earth, Magnetism._

_Awaking._

2766. The awaking takes place of itself through the origination of a new polarity in the brain during the afflux of arterial blood, whereupon the dreams follow which precede the act of waking. During sleep the plant continues to act, the unloaded cortical substance becomes again oxydized and charged; tension arises between it and the medulla, and with this come the dreams. This encephalic polarity is imparted to the sensitive and motor nerves, and the organs open. If external stimuli are superadded, all this happens somewhat earlier. The act of awaking is invariably, however, a restoration effected, or brought about, by the plant, and especially by the circulation.

2767. Man would therefore wake up had there also been no world of the senses; but then he would not continue awake, but at once relapse into slumber, and sleep the eternal death.

III. _Functions of the Organs._

2768. The functions of the organs are the functions of the system associated or combined, just as the organs are but ultimate evolutions of the systems existing under similar relations. The organic functions are always therefore in a state of concatenation with other systems, and there can be no organ which acts in an isolated manner.

2769. By this character a new field for sympathy has been opened. All the organs operate through sympathy. Sympathy is therefore the result of parallel systems, or also of antagonisms between the factors of a _single_ system. Taken in a strict sense, there are no vegetative organs. The organs are therefore limited to the _encephalic animal_, such as are those of motion and the senses, and to the _sexual animal_.

1. _Functions of the Encephalic Animal._

A. ORGANS OF MOTION.

2770. Just as the nerves have a function in themselves, and one directed towards the subordinate organs, so also has the motor system.

2771. The motor system is in the first place doomed to serve the whole body, since it flexes it, moves it forwards and backwards and upon all sides. It is related principally to the movements of the vertebral column, and serves in numberless animals to effect the act of crawling or creeping.

2772. Then again it will serve individual parts of the body, such as the belly in its evacuations, or the sexual animal in emitting urine, &c. It ministers unto the thorax in the act of respiration, which is a very complicated process. The thoracic muscles are to a certain degree co-ordinated with the constantly polar nervous system, and become thereby and in part involuntary. But one main reason of this appears to be the air that is constantly renewed in their cavity.

2773. In the act of respiration two orders of muscles are active, the proper-pectoral muscles, and the abdominal muscle, which has been displaced from the thorax, or the _diaphragm_.

2774. As originally the thorax took its rise at the expense of the abdomen, so also is every inspiration an elevation of the thorax and a displacement of the abdomen. Every breath or in-draught of air expands and produces the thorax, but narrows and arrests the abdomen. The diaphragm expresses this contest. Its contraction being a result of the respiratory tension, expresses consequently a preponderance of the thorax, and in obedience to this, narrows and diminishes the abdomen. It is supplied, in conformity with its origin, by nerves from the upper cervical vertebræ, since prior to this the abdomen extended as far as the head, and the branchiæ were appended to it as _lateral strips of integument_--as in Fishes.

2775. As the thoracic cavity is drawn by the diaphragm's descent towards the abdomen, so by the pectoral muscles is it raised upwards to the head. The latter movements are what is animal in the respiratory process, for they lift the thorax towards the head. Pectoral muscles and diaphragm stand opposite to each other, like limbs and trunk; the ribs are the limbs, the diaphragm the upper abdominal tunic or covering. Through this antagonism what is limbed, as belonging to the thoracic cavity, is drawn upwards, what is abdominal in its character, downwards; the result is expansion, and through this pumping in of the air.

2776. The air is in part voluntarily swallowed like the food, as e. g. by the movement of the ribs, in part involuntarily by the diaphragm. The diaphragm may be termed the heart of the abdominal cavity.

2777. In the lower organized animals, where merely branchiæ are present, the animal motion encroaches but little upon the act of respiration. In Molluscs and Snails, the oxygen is almost always on the branchiæ, as is the case also in Insects. In Fishes the water is still taken in like the food through the mouth, and driven out or expelled by the pharyngeal muscles from between the branchiæ. In them the air is in both respects swallowed. In many Reptiles the air is indeed drawn in through the nostrils, but conveyed into the lungs by a true act of deglutition. These kinds of functions are necessary, because as yet the whole trunk is abdomen, and the thoracic cavity has not as yet separated from it; hence the diaphragm is wanting.

2778. The respiratory originates therefore from the digestive organ; it is freely developed only from the abdomen, and is at length entirely liberated from the latter as a self-substantial cavity, e. g. first of all in the Mammalia. Respiration is originally but an act of deglutition, which has gradually become perfected, by the animal trunk being associated with it to a greater extent.

2779. The pumping in of air has therefore become in the highest degree a process of suction, and in this resembles the digestive function when it has become animal.

2780. Then also the air passes no longer through the mouth, but through the nose, as being the peculiar opening of the thoracic cavity in the head. Even the Fishes have as yet no nostrils opening into the mouth.

2781. The thoracic motion is a limb-motion, and would become locomotion, were the ribs not conjoined. In many of the lower animals the branchiæ are at once organs of motion, such as fins or rudders.

2782. Every inspiration is a self-manning towards the animal; every expiration a retro-depression unto the plant; the abdomen in this case regains the upper hand from the diaphragm reverting to its usual position, and the thoracic cavity narrowing. Respiration is a becoming animal.

2783. The motions in themselves, without reference to the trunk, are the motions of the limbs, as standing, walking, &c. The movements of the arms and feet are sympathetic, because their muscles are of equal signification.

B. FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVE-ORGANS.

2784. These functions have relation only to the nervous system itself, because all nerve-organs are elevated above the trunk, and live in themselves. They are simply the functions of the sensorial organs.

a. _Functions of the Vegetable Sensorial Organs._

2785. These must be regarded as those that still encroach upon the inferior organs. They are not, however, the inferior processes themselves, but their ascensive formations into the nervous system. This therefore works henceforward only in and by itself, but yet in relation to the inferior processes.

1. _Function of the Sense of Feeling._

2786. To constitute the sense of feeling the integument, in other words the nutritive or vascular system, has assumed a nervose character, and consequently that which is in communication with the materiality of the external world. The function of this sense will therefore have materiality only for its object.

2787. The integument is the organ by whose means the animal is absolved or liberated from the world. The sensation belonging to it, is none other than the perception of this diversity subsisting between the two.

2788. Through the tegumentary sense, the world becomes a something external in relation to the nervous function; while previously it was such through the medium of the skin for the lower organs only, viz. as an object of absorption. The discrimination of materiality is called _Feeling_. The sense of feeling is the earth-sense.

2789. The sense of feeling perceives materiality, like the nerves perceive all objects or all stimuli, through polar excitation. Every pressure, every contact is polar excitation.

2790. The sense of feeling is characterized by poles only being excited in it by absolute proximity or immediate contact. Just because it is the first sense, through which the animal is set free, so must that which is liberated be at once perceived in the moment of liberation, and thus in immediate contact. The sense of feeling is a polarity of contact, a polarity without distance. The stronger the contact, by so much the stronger is the polar excitation--there is increased pressure. The gravity acts simply by pressure. The perception is therefore resolvable into one of pressure or contact.

2791. Different degrees of pressure necessarily impart different amounts of feeling. Perception of the different degrees of pressure made by an object betrays its inequalities of surface. The sense of feeling is also the sense for determining inequalities, for the Soft and Hard, for the Solid, Fluid, and Gaseous; all these feelings, however, are referable to the contact.

2792. Through diseased conditions, the polarizability of the sensitive nerves may become exceedingly elevated, and they then perceive the polarity of contact prior to the contact having taken place. For the two bodies invariably excite poles that are antagonized to each other. Were other bodies not to approach them more closely, or else act upon them more energetically and so extinguish the polarity; they would remain at an infinite distance in a state of polar relation towards each other. Feeling can therefore be extended to an indefinite distance. Hysterical, mesmerized, and even healthy human beings, feel further than they grasp or touch with the hand.

2793. Homogeneous polarities, or those of the same kind, are throughout nature to be found also by means of others; e. g. electrical polarities are not disturbed by the intervention of magnetic ones. Such is the case also in feeling. That which is related to oneself is felt, although it is more remote from us than other objects, upon which we do not bestow any attention, or towards which we do not turn our poles.

2794. The sense of feeling differs according to the diversity of certain points in the integument, and is thus nobler in character, the higher the rank which these may hold. Thus it is most feebly developed in vegetable situations, where hairs, nails, claws, and scales are placed. It must attain the highest grade of perfection in the animal organs, and thus in the limbs or their parallels, the lips.

2795. In the limbs, by reason of their mobility, the feeling becomes voluntary. It is then wholly in our power to strengthen or weaken the contact, to press gently or firmly, and allow these periods of feeling to succeed each other rapidly or slowly.

2796. Feeling associated with motion is called _touch_; this condition of the organ the _tactile sense_. The tactile sense is by no means different from that of feeling; it is only the combination of feeling with motion.

2797. The fingers are the most perfect organs of feeling, because they are the most moveable parts of the body, and therefore they are _organs of touch_.

2798. As simple feeling perceives the asperities of bodies, so does touch the _forms_. The perception of forms is based upon the form that resides in the _tactile organ_ itself.

2799. All possible forms reside in the motion of the fingers.

2800. Each hand is a semi-ellipse, in which the four fingers are the periphery, the thumb the radius. Both hands together form a perfect ellipse with two radii.

2801. Now, in the ellipse are involved all geometrical figures. The hands include in their movements the whole of geometry.

2802. We can only perceive the forms of nature, because they all reside in ourselves, because we can create them. This, and none other, is the meaning or sense of the doctrine of pre-established harmony.

2803. The sense of touch is also the sense of form. The fingers constitute so perfect an organ, that it is scarcely requisite for us to estimate all its value. In it the whole body is repeated simply in forms, in spiritual motions.

2804. Through the hand the whole planet becomes an object unto us. It is the hand which instructs us how to know this terrestrial world.

2805. The greatest perfection is attained by the greatest variety or multiplied diversity of the organs. The limbs are simply destined for motion, yet feeling also resides in them, because they are invested with integument. Could the limbs therefore divide into motor and tactile members, the conceivable sum total of perfection must be attained. This division is present alone in Man. The feet have become simply locomotive members, because they are those of the sex; but the hands have become tactile members, because they are those of the encephalic animal.

2806. It is not, as has been imagined, the hands, as hands, which confer nobility upon our species, for by their means an essential half of the animality, or the power of locomotion, is lost; but it is the preservation of all possible functions in an animal, and in such a manner that each stands upon its highest grade of perfection. The highest perfection cannot, however, be attained where two functions are attached to one organ. Should both hands and feet exercise the sense of touch, the motion is impaired; should both move the body, then the sense suffers.

2807. The four hands of the Apes are therefore an imperfection, which we have no need to envy them. They can, properly speaking, only climb and grasp with them, but not run. Each gait of theirs becomes therefore ungainly, the horizontal as well as the upright or perpendicular, and they make use of both alternately; because too the act of handling, i. e. of climbing, is their only proper movement. Now, in the act of climbing all the limbs are brought into requisition, and consequently a free voluntary touch and a free progression disappear.

2808. The feet support the body and stand in its service.

2809. The hands are, on the contrary, supported by the body, are free.

2810. The wings also support the body.

2811. Feet and hands define man. Through the two only does he become _free_.

_Tegumental Covering._

2812. The skin, as being originally a branchia, is provided also with its branchial operculum. This is the epidermis.

2813. Scales are plications or folds of the epidermis, which accord with the situation of the branchial vessels; they are therefore arranged generally in a circular form around the body, and are more definitely varied upon the dorsal than ventral aspect of the body. Large scales, or those which may be regarded as formed by the confluence of several scales, are called scutes.

2814. It is merely the epidermis which is concerned in the production of the squamous covering; but if the former branchial vessels emerge themselves so as to project above the integument and become dried, then hairs originate.

2815. If these hairs ramify, then there are feathers.

2816. It is only therefore the Mammalia and Birds who possess a proper external covering or garment.

2817. The claws or nails are scales upon the extremity of the branchial arches, which have become animal in character, or in other words, are digital scales; they are animal branchial opercula.

2818. The nails are demi-claws, and therefore leave the points of the digits free. Free digital apices or points constitute the most perfect organ of touch, because this is then divided into two parts and because the nail increases the amount of resistance.

2819. The organs of defence are therefore an appendage of the sense of feeling, as are the bones of the motor system.

_Splanchnic or Visceral Senses._

2820. These senses will not be found to disown their predecessors; and just as the latter extracted the qualities from terrestrial matter, so also do they. But while the former had to deal with the material, the present set will have to transact business with the spiritual qualities.

2. _Function of the Gustatory Sense._

2821. Digestion is a chemical process, and one indeed wherein actual mixture and decomposition take place; it is therefore also, and "par excellence," an aqueous process. For matters that are actually decomposible are alone submitted to digestion, since it is of too coarse a character to perceive the proneness of such bodies to decomposition.

2822. It belongs only to a higher grade of perfection, or to a nervose condition of the digestive process, to perceive the rationale of the decomposition, or the spiritual conflict, which prevails between the matters, when they are about to separate.

2823. Now, the organ which only perceives the qualities of matters, without reference to their actual separation, is a sense. Upon the highest grade of perfection the digestive passes over into a sensorial function.

2824. _Tasting_ is the first commencement of the digestion in the nervous system, where the aliments are felt just before the analysis into their polar quantities has taken place. The gustatory is a water-sense.

2825. For the exercise of the sense of taste the same conditions are requisite as for digestion, viz. solution and capacity for decomposition. Without the capacity for being dissolved, and without the occurrence of actual solution, nothing can be tasted, any more than digested. The saliva is the gastric juice for the tongue.

2826. If water be the basic element in the process of digestion, so in gustation must the higher water, or the _salt_, be the basis of taste. Salt alone is sapid, and every thing in order to be tasted, must possess saline properties.

2827. The tongue, by means of the saliva, passes over gradually into salt. Salt is the last extremity of the tongue. The salt-formation is a member of the gustatory formation. Hence tasting is only an ascension of the inorganic to the animal tongue. The salt is the gustatory sense of the earth.

2828. The general object of taste is the salt of the sea. It alone can and must be converted into a pleasing taste or relish. What is general in nature, is the antetype of that which is equivalent in an organism. Sea-salt and the tongue or saliva are one in kind.

2829. Every thing admits only of being tasted, in so far as it is salt; every thing is but savoury, in so far as it is marine salt.

2830. As the component parts of sea-salt are acid and alkali, so also are both these the extremes of tastes. Tastes are divisible accordingly into acid and alkaline savours.

2831. As salt is a product of what is inorganic, so will the sapid bodies of this kind be pleasant objects for gustation, provided they do not act chemically nor in excess. Therefore, what is saline, or acid and alkali combined, is agreeable to the taste, even if its action should last a long time.

2832. On the contrary, the proper organic savours, which admit with difficulty of being reduced to the former or inorganic kinds, if they do not prove at once nauseous or unpleasant, yet become so by lengthened operation, e. g. the Sweet, the Bitter.

2833. According to these savours has the organ of taste been regulated. It hath in itself also polar relations. The point or tip of the tongue tastes what is acid, its root more readily what is bitter, its dorsum or back what is poignant or moist.

2834. The matters are not mechanically analyzed upon the tongue; it does not therefore taste the several component parts, but only their chemical behaviour or relation in the water, in other words, their reaction.

3. _Function of the Olfactory Sense._

2835. In the lungs the air is materially analyzed and deprived of its oxygen; but, when these organs have assumed a nervose character, the tension only of the air unto the analysis will be perceived. Now, the action of the air is the electrism. The nose perceives only the electrical condition of the air.