The Organic Relationship Between the Soul and the Cells.
Hitherto only little study has been given to the spiritual qualities
of the cells, and such investigations must always meet with certain
insurmountable difficulties. The reason is that we only judge others by
ourselves and we are therefore unable to understand the spiritual life of
any being that is not one of our kin.
If a being stands higher or lower than ourselves its spiritual
experiences, if not entirely different from ours, are at least limited
and modified by the being’s own power of comprehension. If, however,
these beings show manifestations of life that we understand, we must
conclude that their spiritual or mental life is correspondingly active.
Such a position we occupy with regard to the beings called cells. From
the result of their activities we conclude that they, like men, are
endowed with aspirations capable of the highest conceivable evolution.
What economic necessities are to man, the arterial blood is to the cell.
The blood is an artificial product which nature no more gives to the
cell than it gives clothes, food, houses and the like to man. Nature
provides the raw material and cell and man alike must learn how to adapt
it for the necessities of life. This operation, however, involves great
difficulties. All such artificial products stand in inverse proportion
to the power of the individual. The more perfect they are the more
impossible it is for the individual to produce them. Only as citizens in
a community, that is, through organization, are the individuals able to
produce such products as exceed their isolated forces.
Although we cannot comprehend the inner life of the cell, nor the world
in which it dwells, we are able to judge, from the wonderful perfectness
of the organisms built by cells, that they have reached in their world
and measured by their power a higher state of development than man. It
is not only possible but highly probable that the human individuals will
sometime build an organism of the same perfectness, but as yet they have
not done so. The cells have long ago passed the stage of organization
that characterizes human society at present.
From the fact that the first purpose of every organic structure is to
serve the individuals of which it is composed, it follows that nobody,
except these same individuals, can build the organism in question.
Independently the cells build the human body here in time and they must
do the same in the future life. The organism cannot exist in other
surroundings than those for which its organs are adapted. But this
adaptation can only be effected by the individuals that form the building
material of the organs, because the organs just express their relations
to the world in which they exist. Thus it follows of necessity that man’s
resurrection or transition from one world to another must be identical
with the dying cells’ upbuilding of that organism which man shall possess
in a future life. Any other form of resurrection is neither possible nor
conceivable. It is further confirmed by the relation that exists between
the soul and the cells. This relationship, as we intend to show, is such
that the soul receives its entire individuality, all its forces and
faculties, from the cell-organism, the previous resurrection of which
therefore is an indispensable condition for man’s own rise to another
life.
If the mass of a body is living the body itself is alive. The whole
receives its qualities from its elementary components. The organism
itself is a living being. From the point of view of the building material
the organism is a society composed of independently living individuals;
from the point of view of the whole again it is a living individual of
higher order than the individuals that form its social side. Man is a
cell in the social body, but is himself composed of lower individuals,
which again consist of more primary units.
Man, considered as being possessed of a body, _is an individual composed
of lower individuals_.
We now ask the question: What is the relation between the higher
individual and the lower ones? This is only another and more exact form
of the question: What is the relation between the soul and the body?
Because, what is the body and what is the soul? The body is the sum of
the lower individuals, or, in other words, it is the organized mass of
cells. The soul, as the feeling, thinking and willing principle, is the
real spiritual unity in this mass, or just what we denote by the word
man, or the higher individual. To ask, what is the relationship between
the higher individual and its lower constituents is therefore the same
as to ask, what is the relation between the soul and the cells? Take away
the latter, and there is nothing left of the body. The cells mean here
everything, and it is to them consequently that the soul can be thought
to stand in relation.
Formerly the problem was to explain how soul and body as two
substantially different entities were related to each other. They had
then nothing in common, nothing to encourage an interaction. If now
the relation holds between the soul and the cells we have at least
commensurable quantities to deal with.
So far all is well. But now other difficulties arise. We can and must
ask, how an interaction is possible between the soul and the cells even
if they are formally, according to their inner nature, kindred beings? In
other respects they are not so separated and different that a spiritual
intercourse is inconceivable. As inaccessible as is the inner life of
the cell to man, so incontiguous is the spiritual life of man to the
cell. These beings are so widely separated that they cannot possibly
communicate directly with each other, and yet in order to establish a
mental or spiritual interrelationship, such communication is just what is
necessary.
The soul and the cells must have something in common that is of a purely
spiritual nature. As the spiritual always is a comprehending substance
with nothing but comprehensions as its content, the something common to
both must consequently have the form of common comprehensions. Not all
comprehensions, however, incite to activity and a smaller number yet call
forth a co-operation of independently living individuals. But, obviously,
the perceptions that concern us now must be of the latter kind. The
comprehensions in general that induce a being to activity we call wants
or appetites. In its desires a being conceives its own ego in want of
one thing or other. The feeling of discomfort, accompanying the want,
naturally causes the endeavor to satisfy the want through a corresponding
effort. The incitement to activity then is purely spiritual. Are the
soul of man and the cells subject to such common needs, requiring
their co-operation? If so, at least their wants or appetites cannot be
wholly congruous. Such are only to be found in entirely similar beings.
But different wants are satisfied in different ways; each requires a
carefully adapted form of activity. All direct, immediate co-operation
of the soul and the cells is therefore impossible. Only man with man, or
cell with cell, can co-operate in the primary sense of the word.
But an indirect working alliance is not yet precluded. Though themselves
different, the two beings may comprehend wants identical in substance,
but not in form. The formal discrepancy would require not only different
modes of satisfying the need, but also different kinds of activity;
but the common substance might yet under certain conditions so unite
and interlink the different labors, that the result would show a mutual
co-operation.
We shall presently see that the soul and the cells are so united with
each other that _the connecting link is the organism per se_. From the
point of view of the cells the organism, with its different members and
organs, was nothing but the collective expressions of individual wants.
Now man comprehends as his needs only the wants of the organs; in other
words, the collective wants of the cells are the individual wants of the
soul. Experience teaches us that the soul has no direct comprehension
of the cells, but only of their organic unions. To prove this it may be
sufficient to point out that before the discovery of the microscope, man
knew absolutely nothing of the existence of these beings, much less that
they were the all-governing forces in his own body. But also in other
ways we may ascertain that the comprehending power of the soul does not
reach beyond the organs. This is apparent from the different significance
the physiological processes have for the soul and for the cells. If we
consider the most important of them all, our nutrition, and ask ourselves
for whom the nourishment is really intended, we find that it is for the
cells and for the cells alone.
The food benefits the soul only if it is utilized by the cells. But the
nourishment that the soul craves does not satisfy the cells. Hunger and
satisfaction are not even simultaneous in both, at least not as regards
the same food. As a rule, the soul comprehends hunger when the cells are
satisfied and _vice versa_. The soul’s hunger ceases the moment suitable
food in sufficient quantity is introduced in the stomach. But this does
not help the cells. Because, if the food remained in the stomach, to the
satisfaction of the soul, the cells would soon die of starvation. The
nourishment in the stomach is of the same importance to the cells as the
provisions stored in the warehouse of the community are to the human
individuals. These also would die from hunger if they let the victuals
remain in the stores. The people must undertake to distribute, prepare
and consume the food. Similarly the cells would starve to death unless
they prepared the food in their common storage to suit their wants. The
nourishment must be transformed into blood through the whole complicated
process we call digestion. When this is done, the cells are able to
satisfy their craving, and simultaneously a new hunger-feeling arises in
the soul. Although it is the _same food_ that satisfies both parties,
it is the same food administered in different forms, at a different
time, and in a different mode. We are concerned with dissimilar beings
possessed of wants at once different and yet most intimately associated.
The connection is not difficult to understand. When the soul comprehends
the need of the stomach, it is the collective want of the cells that
comes to expression as the individual want of the soul. The different
needs receive in different form an identical substance and this fact is
obviously the connecting link between the soul and the cells. We might
without difficulty carry out the same reasoning in regard to respiration
and all the other physiological processes of the body.
From what we have said it is evident that the soul and the cells employ
the body differently; but for the sake of clearness this ought perhaps
to be further accentuated. The difference may be thus expressed: The
soul acts with the members and organs of the body as units, whereas the
cells perform the work of the organs as individuals. It would be easy
to explain what this implies if we could point to similar conditions
in human society. But no exactly similar institutions exist there, at
least not to the same extent. They would exist if the ideal socialistic
state was realized. The cells in their sphere have carried through a
communism of the most rigid form. Their social organs then do not work at
the cell-individual’s own initiative, but only upon the command of the
central power and under its guidance and control. But even in the present
organization of mankind, we find a few organs which offer a suggestive
comparison. Especially is this the case with the defensive organ of
society, the standing army, which is entirely under the control of the
central power and acts only upon its command and under its control.
As to its composition the army is a mass of independently living
individuals, co-operating so as to form an organic whole. All the work
this unit performs is done by the thousands of soldiers of which it is
composed. If the government decides to use this organ, that is if it
declares war, we know that it leads, arranges and controls the army as
one unit. It is not concerned with the soldiers as individuals, but only
as organized masses.
Exactly analogous is the relation between the soul and the organs,
composed of cells, in man’s organism. Here also the cell-individuals
perform the work of the different organs. The soul is not concerned
with the cells as individuals. It governs, guides and superintends the
movements of the members as elements; that is, commands the cells as
organic masses.
We now consider the following facts established. The soul and the cells
are different beings with different wants. They do not feel or comprehend
in the same way and can therefore not have immediate perceptions of
each other. However true this is on one side it is on the other just
as certain that they are so intimately connected as to form the same
organism through the medium of which they feel their mutual wants and
therefore must have some comprehension of each other. This strange and,
as it may seem, contradictory relation depends on the fact that the union
between the soul and the cells does not extend to their whole entity.
We have seen that the soul comprehended only the collective not the
individual wants of the cells. Within certain defined limits therefore
they have a common substance that causes their marvelous co-operation
through the body.
To understand and explain this coöperation we must make clear how the
soul and the cells in their _innermost_ nature are united. And we shall
learn this by going to the bottom of the meaning of the expression that a
common substance so governs their relationship that the collective wants
of the cells become the individual wants of the soul.
How then are the soul and the cells intrinsically connected?
The answer may be derived in two ways. We might take both the subjective
and the objective side of the wants as our point of view. If we first
consider the subjective side the relationship between the soul and the
cells may be stated as follows:
We have previously pointed out that in its wants a living being perceives
its own ego as related to something else. This is an axiom that needs no
demonstration. If now the soul comprehends the collective wants of the
cells as its own, this can only mean that the soul comprehends that part
of the cells’ inner nature which expresses itself as their collective
wants, as a part of its own ego. Again the cells within the same limits
on their part comprehend the soul’s inner nature as belonging to their
own individuality. The connection within these limits is so intimate that
they cannot comprehend themselves without at the same time comprehending
each other. The soul must consequently perceive the body as its own body
because the same wants that cause the cells to upbuild the soul also
belong to the soul’s own entity. On the other hand the soul in conceiving
itself cannot comprehend the cells as such because the identity is not
extended to their whole individuality.
When a being conceives the wants of somebody else as its own wants it
is at the same time directly influenced by the other. Thus the soul
and the cells act upon each other throughout the body. A will of the
soul takes with natural necessity the form of a common impulse upon the
cells bringing them into action in the will’s direction. If the soul,
for instance, wishes to move an arm or a hand, a collective want is
simultaneously created in the cells that form the organ in question to
execute that movement.
We arrive at the same result by considering the fact that the different
wants of the soul and of the cells are identical in substance. The
same substance cannot enter into and define different beings unless
they themselves enter in and define each other. As now both parties
comprehend wants identical in substance, the soul must necessarily belong
to the cells so that it is the ground for their collective wants. But
these wants were the cell-individual’s higher wants, manifested in the
organization of the body. The soul therefore is potentially present in
the cells in the form of their higher wants and is consequently developed
along with the upbuilding of the body. Only when this is ready is the
soul’s entity developed. The soul must then comprehend the organism as
its particular body when conscious of its own ego, but the cells do not
enter into the soul’s entity as individuals and are therefore not present
as such in man’s consciousness.
For this organic co-operation the soul and the cells need no language, no
signs to communicate with each other. It is not even necessary that they
are aware of each other’s existence. It is sufficient that each party
comprehends its own wants and acts for their satisfaction according
to its own nature. If they do this their co-operation through the body
receives a simple and at the same time complete explanation.
But however natural this interaction is, it is nevertheless a wonder
above all wonders. The world that exists to the soul does not exist to
the cells, and _vice versa_. They have an entirely different conception
of the realm in which they live. They have different apprehensions,
feelings and wants and perform accordingly different functions. But
in spite of this they are, as we have seen, within certain limits so
intimately connected that these different comprehensions and labors are
interlinked with each other, regulating each other as accurately as the
wheels in a clock.