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 ANIMALIN 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, thefeeling 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 somethingforeignor 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 calledexcitability.
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 callirritability.
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 theanimal 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 ANIMALIN 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, aplanetis, 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 notilluminated, 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 anabbreviationor contraction.
2555. After the discharge the fibrous extremities arehomonymous; they repel each other, and relaxation or extension ensues.
2556. The motion of the fibres is consequently a perfectly galvanic process, devoid ofmaterialinterference, 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 animalappearsas 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.
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 juicesecretedunder 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 orprocess 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 anddestruction 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 apolar 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 topoisonthem. 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 thetaste.
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, whichhas 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 isHunger.
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 isThirst. 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.
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 theBile, 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 canbe 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 bloodconsists 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. Thewaterin 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 intofibrine. 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 oflimefor 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 isliver 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 noticeinteresting 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 acharging, 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 beindifferencing.
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 nervoussystem 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 arterialblood, 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 itsaction 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 systemsalso 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 calledMesmerism, 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—areclair-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 constantstate 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 becomesmore 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 ordreams.
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 theanimalsystems.
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 wouldsleep.
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 uponthe 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 theycease, 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,—