does not operate with absolute or unconditional velocity. To the
validity of this statement, observations of many kinds, especially
those made in diseases, and by astronomical computations of the strokes
of the chronometer, afford additional evidence.
2546. Thus, for a stimulus impinging upon the brain, to act or be
transmitted from thence into the toes, there elapses 1-200,000,000th
of a second. In the event of disease, a retardation in the process is
conceivable, and may admit even of being observed.
2. _Function of the Globe-tissue._
2547. The dense or solid form is the matter, when it has died away; the
function also, or the crystallization, died therein, so soon as the
crystal was represented. The office of the bones is only to preserve
the counterpoise to the nerve, to supply a limit, and therefore a
support to its action, by which means the achievement of the latter
first becomes possible.
2548. The business of the bone, is to play an antithetic part to the
nerve, and nothing else, or to serve the latter as a "terra firma,"
upon which it may execute its plans. The bone suffers, and in this
consists its office. The other offices of the bone, such as its
being the firm and solid framework of the body, its protecting the
nervous mass, &c., are subordinate matters, which are at once clearly
understood.
3. _Function of the Fibrous-tissue._
2549. There is the active motion. The primary motion is, however, a
result of the polar tension induced in the æther by the light. Just as
the heat has been produced in the æther by the light-polarity, so has
been the animal motion in the fibres by the polarity of the nerves.
2550. Every fibre, when it is in motion, has necessarily two polar
extremities. For the fibre stands between the artery which is
oxygenous, and the nerve which is basic, or between a zinc and silver
pole.
2551. In the conditions of rest the two poles must be neutralized,
or, generally speaking, not in existence. This is only possible by
disjunction of the galvanic circuit or chain.
2552. Since the artery is constantly operating upon the fibre, but the
nerve only, when it has been stimulated; so must this change in the
condition of the fibre reside in the change of the nervous influence.
2553. In unirritated conditions the nerve does not act upon the fibre;
the latter is not _illuminated_, nor does it stand in a state of
tension with the nerve, which is not in itself polar, but is only, when
stimulated, a sun towards the fibre, or polar within itself. If the
chain be then dissevered, the fibre is in a state of indifference.
2554. Thus, in the event of tension, the nervous extremity of the
fibre becomes negative, the arterial extremity positive; both ends
necessarily attract each other in order to discharge or unload
themselves. This attraction is an _abbreviation_ or contraction.
2555. After the discharge the fibrous extremities are homonymous; they
repel each other, and relaxation or extension ensues.
2556. The motion of the fibres is consequently a perfectly galvanic
process, devoid of _material_ interference, between nerve, fibre, and
blood. The nerve is silver, the artery zinc, and the fibre moist card.
All theories of motion based upon swelling of blood, elementary change,
and such like causes, are not animal, though organic in character; the
former are injections, the latter chemical processes.
2557. Through the fibrous tissue being shortened and elongated, the
entire animal is self-displaced.
2558. Through the fibrous tissue the animal _appears_ as animal,
through the point-tissue it is (and that in essence) an animal. God
is in himself, but he first appears in the world. This elucidates or
explains the relation of "noumenon" and "phenomenon."
4. _Function of the Cellular Tissue._
2559. This tissue has no other function than that in the plant. Many
saps or juices are effused into the cells. The latter are engaged in
constant expansion and contraction, whereby they decompose and propel
these juices. They are the proper seat of the nutritive process, since
they coincide with the capillary vessels.
2560. But as every rigidification is combined with volatilization, so
does a process of evaporation occur in them at the same time.
2561. This process is the property of the teguments or membranes, both
of those lining the internal cavities, as also of such as are placed
externally.
2562. But the process of evaporation is principally the function of the
true skin or corium. As an organ of evaporation the corium is similar
to the lung. It is consequently aeriform water, which of necessity
constitutes the principal mass of evaporation.
2563. The water is, however, mucous in character, the mucus becomes
oxydized in the air, and through this also carbonic acid is formed.
_Heat._
2564. The chief function of the cell-formation is the process of
heat. The cell-process and heat-process are one in kind. Heat is the
product of the process of condensation and rarefaction, and thus of the
nutrition and evaporation, both of which happen in the cells, or, if we
please, in the capillary vessels.
2565. In the skin the process of temperature is individualized.
2566. All temperature depends upon the process of condensation and
rarefaction. At one time it is the nerves, at another the vessels,
anon, external influences, which alter or modify it. Animal heat,
like the cosmic heat, has been produced by change of the fixation.
This change, however, takes place principally in the nutrition and
evaporation.
2567. The fat is the "residuum" or the antagonism of the process of
evaporation or water-formation. It is therefore deposited everywhere on
the water-organs, beneath the integument, along the intestine and the
vessels, around the kidneys, and so on.
2568. It is, like the adipocire, a product of the aqueous
decomposition. On this account it is subservient to the process of
temperature. It is the only isolator of heat, while all other animal
bodies are conductors.
II. _Functions of the Systems._
2569. The functions do not concern the whole body, but only its
principal parts.
a. VEGETABLE FUNCTIONS.
2570. The vegetative functions are matter-changing processes, which,
consequently, correspond directly to the chemical processes, or are
rather of one kind with these, but altered by organic elemental bodies.
1. _Functions of the Intestinal System._
2571. The general function of the integument consists in the secretion
of juices, of which there are principally two kinds, the general and
special.
2572. The general intestinal juice is mucus; it acts by rarefying.
2573. The gastric juice is of an aqueous, mucous, and acid nature. It
acts as an acid and is endowed with chemically solvent properties.
2574. The bile is of a basic, inflammable, alkaline nature. It acts
also chemically by analysing and precipitating.
2575. The saliva is the gastric juice of the head. It is a juice
_secreted_ under the influence of the sensibility, and is on that
account indifferencing, and nullifying in its effects; it is the
highest poison.
2576. As the indifferent saliva precedes the gastric juice, so does the
indifferent pancreatic fluid the bile.
2577. The proper function of the intestinal system is the digestion
with all its divisions. There is an animal and a vegetative, or oral
and abdominal digestion.
a. _Oral Digestion._
2578. Oral digestion is a mortifying or putting to death of the food.
2579. Since what is organic only serves as aliment for the animal,
but nothing can be assimilated to the latter, without its having been
previously reduced to the original condition of Infusoria, so also must
the first act of the digestive process depend upon this, or converting
the organic into primary organic bodies.
2580. This reduction to the primary condition is a putting to death
of the organic individual. Organisms only which have been killed, can
be converted into infusorial matter, and are then nutriment for the
animal. The first act of digestion is consequently an act of putting to
death.
2581. The act of killing consists of two moments, the mechanical and
dynamical, or in lacerating and poisoning.
_Laceration._
2582. The mechanical act of putting to death commences with the search
after nutriment, and thus with the movement of the feet; to this
succeeds the prehension, or seizure with the claws or hands.
2583. This motion of the limbs is then repeated in the cephalic
members, or the jaws.
2584. The seizure of the food with the cephalic arms or jaws, is the
infliction of a wound commensurate with the position and form of the
teeth. The teeth are digits of the cephalic limbs, or being devoid of
any fleshy layer, claws. A gripe with such digits is in itself the
infliction of a wound. For, in order that the food be grasped with
only sufficient firmness to admit of its being drawn into the mouth,
the sharp digital points of the mouth, i. e. the teeth, must make an
incision therein.
2585. To seize, bite, wound, and kill, is in an animal one and the
same act. For, so soon as the food or prey is seized, and consequently
wounded, it is drawn deeper into the mouth, and therefore a new grasp
and bite is essayed.
2586. Upon this the food is twirled about in the mouth by the muscles,
or is chewed, whereby the parts are separated into mechanical atoms.
_Poisoning._
2587. Mechanical atoms are, however, not yet dead, because the vital
polarity is not extinguished. It is requisite for a dynamic act, which
suppresses all galvanism, to operate upon them.
2588. As this act of killing has directly for its object the death
of the Organic and that alone, so is it a venenation or _process of
poisoning_. To poison is not merely a chemical act, but one having for
its immediate purpose, to separate the connexion of the organic atoms.
2589. The first act performed by the animal is that of poisoning.
2590. Poisoning, as being a direct aggression upon and destruction
of life, is a destruction of the galvanic process. Now, the galvanic
process is destroyed by suppression, destruction, and separation
of its poles. The demolition of poles is a _polar equilibration_.
Poisoning is equilibration of poles on the galvanic organism, or their
neutralization.
2591. The primary change of poles is, however, in the blood. Poisoning
is a balancing of the blood-poles.
2592. Indifferent blood is no longer blood, but chyle or infusorial
primary mass.
2593. The nutritive fluid or chyle is poisoned organic substance. There
is no aliment except what is wrought by poison.
2594. The poisoning of the aliments must take place through the medium
of their blood, or their sap. If poison therefore does not get into the
blood, the death does not ensue. The digestive juice is poison only for
the blood, but not for the other systems.
2595. Chemical bodies which induce death, act by destruction of the
bodies themselves, not merely by their neutralization or excessive
polarization. They do not operate very differently from iron when in a
state of red heat. Such is the case with sulphuric acid, nitric acid,
alkalies and arsenic.
2596. Now, if these bodies be called poisons, there are thus three
kinds of poisons, mineral or chemical, vegetable and animal poisons.
2597. The chemical poisons destroy the mass; they convert the Organic
into minerals.
2598. Vegetable poisons reduce the animal to the plant; they do not
effect the destruction of the mass in a general sense, but only that
which is purely animal, or the nervous system--they are nervous poisons.
2599. The animal poisons destroy what is vegetable in the animal, or
the galvanic process--are blood-poisons.
2600. _The saliva is the digestive poison._
2601. The saliva is not present, in order to macerate, and so prepare
the dry aliments for digestion, but to _poison_ them. Everything else
is only a subordinate operation. Now, the process of poisoning takes
place only in the blood. The saliva does not act without inflicting a
wound.
2602. Strictly regarded, all saliva is poison. There are examples of
the saliva of birds, and even of men when inflamed with passion, having
acted as poison.
2603. All other animal poisons, contagious principles or miasmata,
are analogous to the saliva, being partial salivæ, partial poisons.
Diseases of the skin produce tegumentary poisons or salivæ;
glandular diseases, glandular poisons; nervous diseases, nervous
poisons; diseases of the lungs, pulmonary poisons. The saliva is the
blood-poison; the hydrocyanic acid, the nervous poison.
2604. During mastication saliva imbues every atom of the food, whereby
the mass is throughout neutralized, or annulled.
_Docimasy or Testing._
2605. The oral digestion or that of the mouth cannot, however, occur
by itself, without its being a nervous process also. The intestinal
function taken up into the nervous system is the _taste_.
2606. Taste is the chemism resident in the head, the digestion in
the nerves. Taste therefore happens according to the theory of the
digestion or the chemism.
2607. The lowest element of the chemism is the water, the highest
repetition whereof in the earth is--the salt. The former is therefore
the object of abdominal digestion, the latter of nervous digestion.
To taste is to digest salt. In order to taste the salt, every part
of the food must be brought in contact with the tongue; this is only
possible through comminution of the aliment by means of the teeth. The
mastication dissolves the aliments mechanically into atoms, just as
digestion will resolve them chemically into "infusoria."
2608. That which should be digestible, must have a saline character,
must be soluble. The tongue is accordingly the test-organ of the
digestive process.
_Deglutition._
2609. At first the tongue tastes only with its apex or tip; but after
the salts which operate upon the tip are neutralized and examined,
the tongue will also taste with its root, the two extremities of the
tongue and their gustatory sensations being thus mutually opposed. It
therefore takes the morsel upon the root and presses it against the
palate, whereby the pharyngeal muscles clasp and swallow it.
2610. In deglutition the object of the tongue is not to give over or
surrender the morsel to the pharynx, but to enjoy it "per se." During
this fruition, however, it is robbed of it. Deglutition is therefore a
result of an undesigned mechanical contrivance. Each organ works for
the other, while fancying that it works for itself, which again it
actually does, while it reaps the enjoyment so derived. Has the tongue
finished tasting the food, then the pharynx obtains it involuntarily.
2611. To the saliva, and thus to a morsel, the acidulous gastric juice
is polarwise related; both therefore seek to unite, and with this their
organs also, namely, pharynx and stomach. The stomach obtains the
preponderance, because it is acidulous; the pharynx moves towards it
and with it also the morsel.
_Rumination._
2612. If the food, when received into the stomach, continue acid by
virtue of its nature, or from not having been properly chewed and
imbued with saliva and so neutralized, it is then homonymous with
the gastric juice. The stomach therefore seeks to neutralize it, by
restoring it again to the action of the saliva.
2613. Acid aliments cause vomiting. Grass which has not been
masticated, and therefore enters acid or non-killed, and susceptible
of fermentation, into the stomach, is regularly brought back into the
mouth, and to the saliva, i. e. is ruminated or rechewed.
2614. Rumination is a regular act of vomiting, which has originated
from the antagonism of the saliva and gastric juice and from the acid
nature of the morsel.
b. _Intestinal Digestion._
2615. The intestinal digestion is the perfect chemical process taken up
along with all its moments into the animal.
_Gastric Digestion._
2616. The stomach exercises by means of the spleen the oxydizing
process of the intestine, the solvent function, and thus the action
of the water. The gastric juice is related to the food, like water is
to earth. The gastric digestion is liquefaction, unto which oxydation
makes the preliminary step.
2617. Through the process of liquefaction, the poles are only
potentially augmented, but are not dissevered, nor new substances
formed. The gastric digestion creates no new bodies, but only mixes the
old in the most homogeneous and intimate manner with each other.
2618. The gastric digestion is an animal process of fermentation. In
deranged states of the stomach there is therefore a propensity to acid
eructation, development of carbonic acid, and even formation of sugar.
2619. This digestion consequently reduces the (animal) food to the
signification of the plant. Gastric digestion is a process of vegetable
germination. The salivary process is a reduction to the animal death,
digestion a reduction of this dead something itself to a lower kingdom.
2620. The gastric juice alone, like an acid, effects the solution of
the aliment; with this, the movement of the gastric walls, which only
tends to produce an easier mixture of the alimentary particles, having
nothing to do.
_Hunger._
2621. Through the digestive process the gastric juice is consumed by
the food, and the stomach deoxydized. If there is a deficiency of
dephlegmatizing and deoxydizing aliments, then the peroxydation of
the stomach must produce a feeling--called appetite. If this be not
appeased, the oxygenic tension in the stomach is elevated or increased,
and then begins to become unpleasant; this is _Hunger_.
2622. Here the feeling of the stomach's peroxydation is an obstructed
process of fermentation, dependent upon want of food and alkaline
principles.
_Thirst._
2623. The feeling of the reverse condition to the above is _Thirst_.
It originates through a too rapid deoxydation of the stomach, through
deglutition of the gastric juice on account of an excess of food. But
it may also originate from a deficiency of gastric juice, or from
an alkaline tendency in the latter; just as hunger resulted from a
superabundance of gastric juice, or a disposition to form acids.
2624. Thirst is the feeling of too powerful a digestion, or of too
rapid fermentation, whereby the product or leaven of the latter
becomes, as it were, bankrupt; upon this the blood flows in greater
quantity, in order to secrete the gastric juice; the arterial nature
becomes elevated, and finally, an inflammatory condition, associated
with a sense of dryness, originates, and is propagated as far as the
mouth.
2625. Thirst and heat rank, like hunger and cold, parallel to each
other. The feeling of dryness appears as heat, that of moisture, as
cold. Cold therefore at once extinguishes or quenches the thirst; but
produces hunger, which again is mitigated by heat.
_Biliary Digestion._
2626. The stomach is the pulmonic intestine; the duodenum, through
its combination with the liver, is the vascular intestine, having a
predominant venous character; or the one is the arteriose, the other
the venous stomach.
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.
2836. The sensation of the electrical relations is called _Smelling_.
The olfactory sense is an air-sense. We smell nothing but the
electricity, and neither the contact, nor the impressions, &c. of the
particles that find their way into the nose. These particles would have
no effect upon the nasal organ, if they did not stand in an electrical
relation unto it.
2837. Now, the electrical bodies in nature are the resins or
Inflammables. What salt is for the gustatory, that is resin for the
olfactory sense. The nose is an electrical, a resinous organ.
2838. In like manner the solubility of bodies in the air is as
requisite for smell, as that in water is for taste. The water is the
menstruum of the sapid, as the air is of odorous, bodies; and this
indeed of necessity, because water and air are the antetypes of these
mineral classes.
2839. In order to be an odorous body or object of smell, the resin must
resolve itself into air, or become aeriform. Aeriform resin is æthereal
oil. Bodies such as those which part rapidly with their electricity,
substances containing hydrogen, æthereal oils and burnt spirits, are
the usual objects appreciated by the olfactory sense.
2840. The hydrogenous body is therefore provided with a sweet scent.
Most bodies which are evolved by fermentation, in so far as they are
electrical, are odoriferous. Most blossoms smell agreeably, because
they secrete aerial matters.
2841. The products of putrefaction emit a fetid odour, because they
indicate the presence not of aerial, but aqueous and terrestrial
matters. Nearly all animal bodies stink, besides many secretions of the
sexual parts, because they belong to the vegetable nature.
2842. The objects of taste have their residence in what is inorganic,
but those of smell, as being objects of a higher sense, have it in the
vegetable kingdom. The succeeding or auditory sense has the animal
kingdom for its object, while the eye scans the universe.
2843. The nose is in every respect an electrical organ; it is an
electrophore, or rather a battery consisting of numerous plates. Of the
truth of this, its numerous tortuous passages and laminated bones are
striking proofs.
2844. That the nose consists of a great number of blood-vessels, as
well as of arteriose olfactory nerves, is quite commensurate with its
character or signification, as being a higher pulmonary organ.
2845. The objects of the three vegetative senses are the three elements
of the planet, earth, water and air; in the first of these reside the
relation of the gravity, rest, and crystallization; in the last the
relation of the electricity; in the water that of the chemism. The
sense of feeling is an earth-sense, that of taste a salt-sense, that of
smell a resin-sense.
b. _Functions of the Animal Senses._
2846. The objects of the animal senses are no longer matter, nor its
chemical qualities, but the higher relations of the solar system,
and the highest organizations, the animals themselves. Throughout
the supra-planetary solar system there is naught to be conceived but
motion and light in action. Wherever there is æther, it is in motion;
the corresponding organs of sense must therefore perceive these two
relations. Now, since the animal is also motion and light, and this
alone, so by means of these senses will the innermost of animality
be at once perceived. Animals become acquainted with themselves only
through these senses, and by them only enter, in so far as they are
animals, into communication with each other. In so far as they are mere
masses of matter, they are capable of self-perception through other
senses. These senses may therefore also be called cosmical, while the
three former are terrestrial.
2847. They correspond thus with each other. The tactile sense is a
precursor of the sense of motion, and represents the motion, gravity,
and pressure, after a terrestrial manner; the two splanchnic senses are
the precursors of the light-sense, since they dwell upon the qualities
of the matter, while the light also is only a quality of the æther.
The sense of smell, being as it were an air-sense, will in particular
border most closely upon the light-sense.
2848. Through the two cosmic senses the universe is translated into the
animal, like the planet is through the terrestrial senses; through the
former also the animal spirit, which is a transcript of the universal
spirit, passes over into other animals. They are the senses of the
highest instruction, of freedom.
4. _Function of the Auditory Sense._
In the æther resides the movement of the world.
2849. To the motor system that only which is its equal, and thus the
movement of nature, can of necessity become an object. The motor system
represented as a sense, cannot, however, perceive the borrowed or
derived motion, not the planetary or massive motion, but the primary
motion of the æther. The planetary motion is related to the primary
motion as the oxydation is to the electrism, as chemical analysis to
chemical affinity, and consequently also as respiration to smelling,
as digestion to tasting, in short, as the material metatype to the
spiritual antetype.
2850. The limbs are the planetary motion organized, and therefore
perceive only this material motion--pressure. Touch is related to the
animal sense of motion, as digestion is to the tasting.
2851. Smell and taste no longer perceive the bodies in the very act of
decomposition, but their laws or their spiritual operations; so will
the motor sense not perceive, like the sense of touch, the mass when in
motion, but only the _motor laws of the mass_.
2852. These laws of motion are those of the primary motion. This is,
however, a product of the light in the æther, an effect of polarity,
and that indeed the first polarity which was manifested in the
universe. The motor sense therefore perceives only a motion which has
originated through primary polarity.
2853. Such motion is not relative in kind, i. e. it does not affect
several portions of the matter in reference to some other matter; but
it affects the whole matter internally, or its atoms, so that all
matter may remain in its place and yet every atom of it be moved.
2854. This motion is like the motion of heat in the matter. By it heat
is excited. For internal motion of the atoms, when aroused by polarity,
so that every atom enters into a state of motion against the other, is
a discharging of the poles, and consequently development of heat.
2855. This internal motion has, however, been produced by an external;
for the external motion acts by contact, and this is a process of
polarization. Now, the interior of a mass is only moved by repeated
contact, or through the restlessness of polarization and by a proper
amount of force, or one which is proportional to the mechanical
resistance of the mass to be excited. The last of these is the
stroke or blow, the first the vibration of the body. By vibration or
oscillation only can a body be internally polarized; for, if it does
not oscillate upon the shock being applied, it is still indeed set in
motion, but "en masse," so that the internal parts remain in a state of
rest.
2856. Oscillation is distinguished from continuous or progressive
motion by its affecting the _atoms_ of the body, while the latter acts
upon the body itself. Through the vibration heat is engendered, because
the poles are free and the matter passes over into æther.
2857. Vibration must endure the longest in solid bodies, and thus in
that which belongs to the earth. Among these the hard bodies must take
precedence, because the soft are of an aqueous nature. Among the hard
bodies again the heaviest must vibrate most effectually, because they
offer a longer resistance, and do not yield so soon as light bodies
to the effort made at separation. The purest representative of the
earth-element or the _metal_ is thus the best instrument or means of
vibration, and consequently the object of the motor sense.
2858. Thus as the salt of the earth-element is the object of taste, and
as the resin of the earth-element is the object of smell, so would the
metal be the object of this motor sense.
2859. But no sense-object is without its medium for transmission,
except in the case of the sense of feeling or touch. The salt is only
tasted by means of the water, the Inflammable only smelt by means of
the air; the metal's primary motion could not therefore be perceived
directly by the auditory sense. It must be propagated through the
medium which ranks next to the heat, and whose atoms insinuate
themselves most easily into those of the vibrating body--thus through
the air. Man perceives the primary motion, in which things tend to
resolve themselves into æther, through the air. By the metal, or by
every vibrating body, the vibration of the air is communicated.
2860. This vibration is not, however, a general movement to and fro,
but a dissolution of the material bands. This dissolution can only take
place according to the laws of the primary motion. They are rigidified
in the solid masses as crystalline forms. Every law of motion is a
crystalline form which has become free or spiritually manifested.
Through the vibration forms are engendered in bodies, which are
commensurate with the substance and form of the mass and the degree
of vibration. These forms, being as it were the ghosts or phantoms of
crystals, are called _sonorous figures_.
2861. If the air be displaced when in a state of covibration, it is
not thrown into undulatory circles or waves, like water into which a
stone has been cast, but in each of its parts the sonorous figure of
the rigid body is repeatedly represented. The vibration of air is a
progressive motion of sonorous figures.
2862. If the sonorous figures are not incommensurable, several may
be at one and the same time in a _single_ portion of air, without
interfering with each other. They harmonize, because they have
originated according to concordant laws. But if they are products
of different laws, they are then confused, and an indeterminate
_offensive_ vibration originates, just as savours become loathsome if
they depart from their laws.
2863. These figures of the air are only perceived by the _Ear_. The
ear is the only sense in which the motor system is represented in a
_pure_ state, devoid of any vegetal signification, and simply endowed
with nervose nobility. The ear is therefore the only organ which can
perceive the primary motion of the matter; for like acts only in or
upon its like.
2864. The metals are the ear of nature, the salt her tongue, the resin
her nose, the earth her hand.
2865. The power or capacity excited by sonorous figures of covibrating
according to the same laws, constitutes _Hearing_; the phenomenon is
called _Sound_. Hearing is a primary motion in the musculo-osseous
system of the ear, which is communicated to the auditory nerve. The
auditory sense is æther-sense, metal-sense. Hearing is magnetizing.
2866. The sonorous figures are formed in the auditory organ, and even
in the auditory nerves, just as they have been represented upon an
infinitely small scale in the air. The nerve becomes in hearing a
sonorous figure.
2867. It is not the mere motion in the auditory organs which produces
the sensation of sound; the nerve certainly perceives each movement
in the ears, because none is possible apart from or without primary
motion; only such a motion is no sound, but only a noise. What has been
written in the tingling metal according to eternal laws, is transcribed
or copied in the auditory nerve; it is only this writing, but no
massive motion of the air, which is legible by the nerve.
2868. Melody is a retrogression of the matter into æther, of the formed
world into the primary world; through melody is the spirit of the
world revealed. The ear is the first liberation of the animal from all
terrestrial matter; through the ear the animal becomes for the first
time spiritual.
2869. Melody is the voice of the universe, whereby it proclaims its
scheme, or its innermost essence. Hence the wondrous, mysterious
action of harmony, the secret sovereignty of music. Music is the
expression of the ardent desire to revert to the primary idea. It makes
man unconsciously yearn after a condition which he knoweth not; it
transports him unconsciously into this condition of divine repose and
godly bliss.
_Speech._
2870. That which melodizes proclaims its spirit: the melody of animals
displays their internal law.
2871. _The musical system of all animal laws is Speech._
2872. Speech is the representation of all nature's sonorous figures in
the human organ of sound.
2873. Through speech Man delineates himself in spiritual outlines
or sketches, which, devoid of matter (or body), he sets down before
himself. Such sketches are easily seen through, since to them every
material covering is wanting, and they lie purely before the sensation,
as the law, the will of nature.
2874. Through speech Man appears as a double essence. He is a corporeal
essence; and the spoken word appears before him in the same outlines,
but without body. When conversing, Man is a _self-manifestation unto
self_.
2875. Previous to speech no self-consciousness originates.
2876. Without an auditory organ there is no self-consciousness.
2877. To the organ of hearing, however, belongs also the auditory nerve
and the cerebellum. Without a cerebellum there is no self-consciousness.
2878. While Man appears unto himself, he appears also to change. Nature
is gloomy, incomprehensible; the spirit is clear, and enlightens her.
2879. Manifestation is only possible through self-manifestation;
through a doubling of itself, through its expression.
2880. Animals appear only, in so far as they are individual
self-manifestations of Man.
2881. With speech Man creates unto himself his world. Without
speech there is no world. For the Apes there is no world, but only
tree-fruits, female and male.
2882. Through speech Man becomes acquainted with or learns to know
himself; through it he becomes a self-substantial essence, which
resembles God, because it creates for itself its world, and recognizes
itself, i. e. speaks.
2883. Words are forms of our body mathematically laid down.
2884. A single world is dead, so also are many.
2885. Words, which are connected together according to organic laws,
form an organic system, are at once alive, and have a meaning.
2886. Speech originates gradually like the organs, like Man. Speech
grows like a plant; at first it is only root, next it puts forth
a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms, when it is the perfect
expression of the animal body.
2887. The organ of speech is composed of the three terrestrial organs
of sense, the air-, water-, and earth-sense.
2888. The air-organs are the principal medium, because they must
produce the sonorous figures; the tongue imparts to them the specific
modification; but the lips and jaws, as being motor members, afford the
articulation or the _movement_ proper. The lungs and nose breathe out
the tones; the tongue digests them; the lips move them, and fashion
them into perfect bodies--words.
2889. A word is at once for itself a regularly inter-articulated body.
The sounds are its members, its organs or fundamental formations.
2890. Speaking is a gentle respiration, carried on by the mouth, nose,
and limbs or jaws.
2891. As respiration has a special thorax, so also has speaking. The
speech-(or voice-) thorax is the larynx.
2892. The larynx represents the ribs and arms, which all move in order
to form a sound. The tongue is, so to speak, the head upon this thorax.
2893. The nose imparts euphony to the sounds. It tests their fragrancy.
The tongue gives them a special quality, their chemical character or
taste; the teeth and lips furnish the cadence as a kind of joint to the
sounds, or in other terms the words.
2894. Four organs of sense belong to speech, viz:
Touch in the Jaws.
Taste in the Tongue.
Smell in the Nose.
Hearing in the Ear.
2895. The ear receives the products of the three vegetative organs of
sense. It is a synthetic sense.
2896. The tongue gives the vowels; the jaws the consonants.
2897. In accordance with this the vowels are the _body_ of speech, and
the consonants the _limbs_ or members, whereby it effects its movements.
2898. Vowels express time, consonants space; the one the chemical
import, the other the form.
2899. The vowel E expresses the present, A that which has just past, O
that which has quite passed, U that which has passed long ago, I the
future.
2900. The more consonants there are in the words, so much the richer is
the language; the more vowels, the poorer it is. Such is the speech of
savages or wild men.
2901. The speech of animals is a vocal or vowel-speech.
5. _Function of the Optic Sense._
2902. As the primary motion of the world is manifested to the animal
through the ear; so does the primitive cause of the motion, that of
every activity and every phenomenon, i. e. light, appear unto the
nerve-sense.
2903. The light-sense is similarly formed or modelled according to the
light of nature, and kindles also the light within itself, just as the
light originated in the æther; viz. through primary antagonism taking
place in its own substance.
2904. Light is the binary division of the æther-mass, not an antagonism
between it and some other matter; in like manner sight is a binary
division of the nerve-mass in itself, without antagonism to other
organs.
2905. Sight is the tension of the æther directly continued into the
animal æther, just as taste was a chemical action continued into the
animal chemism, and smell an electrical process continued into the
animal electrism.
2906. In sight the nervous mass is completely self-antagonized, is a
phenomenon unto itself; the eye is the brain placed opposite to the
brain.
2907. Sight is thus a tension between optic and central brain; as
illumination is tension between planetary and solar æther.
2908. Illumination and vision are of one kind, only occurring in
two different sorts of worlds. The planet sees by means of the
illumination, the animal illuminates or gives out light by means of
seeing. Sight is a light-sense.
2909. Now, the illumination is a fixation of æther, a coloration, and
thus a descent of the æther into what is terrestrial. In seeing we
perceive the æther, as to how it becomes world; in hearing we perceived
the world, as to how it became æther.
2910. Seeing and hearing are opposite functions; the first indicates
the creation, the latter the return of the creation into chaos.
2911. Through sight we become acquainted with the universe, through
hearing with the miniature universe, or man. Sight passes out of us,
hearing into us; or through sight Man is posited in the world, through
hearing among his fellow-men. Sight is the speech of the world, hearing
that of the planet.
2912. Sight is the speech or language of the universe, hearing the
language of Man. Through sight the world reveals unto us its spirit or
its thoughts; but through hearing man only discloses what are his own.
As words are but the representations of the disintegrated body of Man,
so are the world-forms the representatives of the disintegrated body of
the primary spirit. The word is a rigidified, crystallized thought of
Man; a natural body is a rigidified, crystalline thought of the primary
act--a word of God.
2913. Through hearing self-consciousness originates; through sight
consciousness of the world, universal consciousness. By means of
the former we only become acquainted with human relations--which is
_understanding_; by the latter with those that are universal--this
being _reason_.
2914. Without the ear there would be no understanding, without the eye
no reason.
2915. Understanding is microcosm, reason macrocosm. From what is
intelligent we expect human wisdom, from what is rational world-wisdom.
2916. That the light also has a medium, whereby it acts upon us, is
at once evident from our existing in such a medium; but it could also
act directly upon us, were it not inevitably broken up beforehand into
colours in traversing the media. All terrestrial elements may be a
medium for the transmission of light, such as the gaseous, fluid, and
solid, i. e. if they are transparent.
2917. We perceive only coloured light, because our organ of light is
only a rigidified colour, a material light. There is no pure light for
us; there is none also in general.
2918. Sight is thus a terrestrial light-tension, a colour-becoming.
2919. This happens only through refraction. The eye is a refracting
medium. It is distinguished from the brain by being a translucent,
refractive, encephalic substance.
2920. Light does not stream into the eye like water into the sponge,
but it progresses gradually into and operates upon it.
2921. The eye, in order to experience the sensation of light, is placed
in a similar tension to the air, water, or crystal. This tension
between it and the brain is perceived by the latter as illumination.
The eye is a prism, in which the brain sees the world, in which the
brain observes its own tension, or the production of colour. Sight is a
deoxydation of the eye.
2922. The optic nerve is an organized ray of light, the brain an
organized sun, the eye an organized chromatic sun or rainbow.
2923. Just as the sonorous figures are delineated in the ears, and
as the nerve perceives these, but not any concussion of the air; so
also does the optic nerve perceive not the light in general, but its
terrestrial formation or the chromatic image, which has been propagated
into the eye.
2924. In an eye, while seeing, the world is depicted; as in the ear,
when hearing, the crystalline forms of the air are delineated.
2925. The eye does not on that account see two worlds. For the
chromatic image is nothing else than that which is external to or
without the eye. It is verily one and the same influence of light,
which acts continuously in a straight line between the chromatic image
and the object apparent or beheld.
2926. As a stick thrusts us from the side whither it comes; so does
the chromatic image from the side whence the light comes. The exit and
entrance of the light are not distinct from each other. The objects
could not therefore appear reversed, because we do not _see_ the image
in the eye, but _feel_ its process of deoxydation along with its
direction.
2927. The objects of the eye are colours. Like as they are related
in nature, so also must they be in sight; for they are only the eye
extended, or this again is only the formed colour.
2928. We see nothing else but colours, no bodies. For the eye there is
no material world. It directly perceives the spirit, and indeed its own
spirit, or the world of light.
2929. There is no pre-established harmony, but complete conformity
between the world and organ of sense. (Vid. Oken's Essays, "Ueber das
Universum als fort-gesetztes System der Sinne," and "Erste Ideen zur
Theorie des Lichts." Jena bei Fromann, 1808.)
II. _Functions of the Sexual Animal._
A. VEGETAL SEXUAL ORGANS.
1. _Of the Sexual Intestine._
2930. As the sexual animal is in every respect the encephalic animal
reversed, so also is this the case in respect to its functions. The
sexual intestine gives out through its mouth or anus, while the other
or animal gut takes in. As being the intestine of the vegetal animal
it receives the fermented product of digestion, or the excrement, and
conveys it backwards towards the sexual orifice or mouth.
2931. The intestinal function of the sexual animal is an act of
vomition. The evacuation is an act of vomition, seeing that the
intestinal contents are moved backwards.
2932. The sexual stomach is the rectum. In it the excrementitious
matter is accumulated, so that it may be ready for being broken away in
the process of evacuation.
2933. The commencement of the sexual intestine is the cæcum, its
extremity the anus.
2. _Functions of the Sexual Lung._
2934. We may distinguish two circulations, the splanchnic or visceral,
which takes place between the lung, intestine, and liver, and the great
circulation, which instead of going to the viscera passes to the other
organs, and is called the bodily or systemic circulation. The liver
excretes the product which results from the splanchnic circulation; the
systemic circulation has its organ also, but one which does not secrete
a special, but general product.
2935. The general secernent organ of the whole body together with all
its systems is the sexual system, which having been elevated by virtue
of this general character to the rank even of an animal, is a true
sexual animal. That which is a general and not a partial excretion, is
imparted by the sexual animal. It is the animal reversed.
2936. Thus the secernent organ of the general circulation must belong
to the sexual system, and perform in it that which the liver, or in
other words the reverse of the lungs, has done in the splanchnic
circulation. The _kidneys_ are the lungs reversed.
2937. If the bile be an extract from the visceral blood, so is the
urine an extract from the body's blood, and is consequently the purest
reflex or pattern of the former.
2938. The urine is sexual blood, just as the excrement is a product of
the sexual digestion. The urine is reversed blood.
2939. The formation of urine is a retro-formation of the blood into
digestive fluid or sap. The urine is blood of the sexual animal which
has become chyle. It has both properties in itself. It is discoloured
blood, and consists for the greatest part of water and salts, all of
which are characters belonging unto chyle. It, however, contains urea,
which corresponds to the noblest parts of the blood. This substance,
like fibrine, consists for the greatest part of nitrogen; it may be
called dissolved or decomposed fibrine. It imparts colour to the
urine; it is converted by oxydation into lithic or uric acid, and is
precipitated of a red colour analogous to that of the blood-globules.
In addition to this, albumen, gelatine, carbonate of lime, and
phosphorus, consequently the whole blood, are present in the urine.
2940. In urea the muscle flows or runs out of the animal, in albumen
the nerve, in lime and phosphorus the bone, in gelatine the tegumentary
together with the visceral system, lastly, in water the menstruum of
the digestion and respiration.
2941. Thus the urine, just like the blood, is the whole body rendered
fluid, but only in a sexual manner, namely, as being half decomposed.
2942. So the bile, from its not representing the whole body, does not
contain the latter in itself. It properly contains only the excretion
of the intestinal process.
2943. The kidneys stand accordingly opposed without distinction to all
the organs, in so far as all of them are affected by the circulation.
Their remote sympathy, or if we please, their antagonism, is with the
animal systems, or with bone, muscle, and nerve. With the osseous,
as being the profoundest system, there is of necessity also a close
sympathy. In diseases of bone the bones, as well as the _morbid
matter_, flow away principally through the urine. Their most intimate
sympathy must be with the organs of circulation, with the lung, liver,
intestine, and skin. As the skin is also an organ of evaporation, so
is the antagonism between it and the kidneys of a direct or immediate
kind. The skin is the kidneys expanded into a large cyst. These are
in turn, just as the lung is, the inverted skin.
2944. A lung in the reversed animal can do nothing else but expire.
It only expels the evaporated matter of the sanguinary system, but
takes in none, so as to alter or support the blood. The sexual animal
aims at the destruction of the animal. The urinary cyst, as being
the remnant of the allantois, and of the primordial kidneys or sexual
branchiæ, is simply destined to purposes of expulsion. It is the larynx
reversed. Micturition takes place through contraction of the cyst,
as does expiration by that of the lungs in Reptilia. It is a cough.
B. FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMAL SEXUAL ORGANS.
2945. The sexual functions proper correspond to the sensorial
functions, though to these upon an inferior stage. They are sensorial
functions, which are simply occupied with the materials of the senses,
so that they are vegetative senses. They are a prefiguration of the
sense of feeling, taste, and smell.
1. _Functions of the Male Organs._
2946. The testes secrete semen in the same manner that the salivary
glands do their fluid or juice.
2947. The semen is sexual saliva, and is thus sexual virus or poison.
Like the saliva destroys that which is living, so does the semen. The
saliva, however, destroys it in order to form a new animal out of the
food; with the same motive the semen destroys it. But both differ in
this, that the saliva takes care of the body to which it belongs, while
the semen attends to another body, the foetus or fruit.
2948. The saliva is only the highest condition of the digestive fluid,
and is thus a totality merely of the intestinal system; the urine
is the total product of the vascular system in its antagonism with
the lung; but the semen is the product of the whole body. Through the
semen the whole body, rendered fluid or reduced to the primary form,
runs away. The semen is the chyle already prepared for all parts; but
because it is in a sexual animal, it thus takes the reverse direction
and passes out.
2949. A fluid, in which the whole animal has been dissolved, is
parallel to the nerve-or point-mass. The semen is a fluid point-or
nerve-mass, the fluid brain.
2950. Even what is spiritual directly resides in the semen; it need
only assume a form and the cerebral functions commence.
2951. The penis, as being the sexual tongue, has only retained the
sensibility of the sense of touch and the function of ingestion.
2. _Functions of the Female Parts._
2952. The female aperture is the pharynx for the ingestion.
2953. It is by means of the female parts that the whole sexual system
becomes for the first time equal to the perfected animal; through them
for the first time the male tongue obtains an oral cavity.
2954. In the total representation of the sexual animal the female parts
environ and include the male. This moment is called _copulation_.
2955. Copulation is the representation of the entire animal out
of two incomplete ones. The sexual animal is only an entire beast
in copulation, and is only then to be considered as equal to the
encephalic animal. Copulation is a representation of the hermaphrodite.
2956. This propensity for bringing about the sexual animal's completion
is sexual passion or lust.
2957. In copulation the male parts are "par excellence" the sensorial
organ, the female only the recipient mouth. Both are properly organs of
sense, but the one is operative or active, the other patient or passive.
2958. Previous to copulation the female parts are consequently
inactive, just as digestion is before taste. As digestion first
commences after taste has given up the food and excited the stomach
to activity, so also the sexual function first commences in female
animals, after the act of tasting is past.
2959. Through copulation what is female becomes masculine. It
now secretes for the first time self-substantial semen. Through
impregnation the female ovaria are first excited to secrete the saliva,
which the whole animal contains in a state of solution.
2960. As the chyle becomes what it is, or is derived from the saliva
and food; so from the semen and vitellus proceeds the foetus, but in
such a manner that the female substance gives it the mass, while upon
this the male only bestows the polarity.
2961. Thus, were the male semen to actually solidify into the foetus;
it is still not its mass which comes into consideration in the
latter, but only its polarizing strength. It supplies the place of
the nervous system. This power appears to reside principally in the
(seminal) Infusoria or animalcules, just as that of the blood does in
the blood-globules. Meanwhile both are only signs of the maturity of
their respective juices, as the Infusoria in sea-water are a proof
also that the sea can produce other animals from its mucus or slime.
The Infusoria are the primary mass of the Organic. Its life is only a
manifestation of the seminal polarity. The Infusoria are semen which
has been poured out over the earth. Propagation is only possible
through reduction taking place to the infusorial primary mass.
2962. The semen and the ovum first meet or come together in the uterus.
2963. The ovum is the mean between vegetable and animal semen. As the
former is distinctly formed and at once represents, upon a small scale
within itself, the principal parts of the future plant, so does the
ovum; but only in parts, from which the animal organs first of all grow
forth, upon which having commenced, the former or vegetal parts are
cast aside.
2964. The ovum is the entire animal in idea, or in design, but not yet
in structure; it is the thought unto the animal; it is related to the
animal as the thought is to the word.
2965. The ovum has therefore no organ of the animal preformed within
itself, but only the materials requisite thereunto. But the materials
are not so general in character, that like as from the infusorial mass,
everything could become or derive its existence from everything else.
But they are at once destined for definite organs, as the vitellus for
the intestine, the albumen probably for the integument.
2966. In an ovum therefore the animal resides preformed only in a
spectral or phantom-like manner. There are principal masses present in
it, from which the principal organs originate.
_Mammæ._
2967. In the oviparous animals the secretion of the vitellus is
distinct from that of the albumen; the one takes place in the ovarium,
the other in the oviduct or uterus.
2968. By degrees the albumen-secreting vessels advance further
outwards upon the orifice of the sexual parts, and are then called
milk-organs--_Mammæ_.
2969. Mammæ are only the vascular bundles of the oviduct placed in the
direction outwards, or albumen-glands of the integument.
2970. Mammalia are those animals where the ovarium has completely
separated into albumen-and vitellus-organ.
2971. Those mammæ which have scarcely been detached from the oviduct,
and become free, are necessarily more incomplete, and are situated in
the neighbourhood of the sexual parts--as udders.
2972. As the separation of the substances composing the ovum is an
advancing-step towards their improvement, so also is the removal of the
albumen-glands from the vitelline sac a nobler condition. They cannot,
however, remove further off than to the thorax, because this is the
highest post or station of the vegetative parts.
2973. Milk is a vegetable product of the animal.
2974. Numerous mammæ are a lower development.
2975. The milk is albumen, which has been secreted by tegumentary
glands; it is animal albumen. The lacteal or milk-organs therefore
belong to the sexual system.
2976. As the male parts are only the female otherwise developed, it
is to be comprehended why the male animals also have mammæ. They are
probably the embryo's principal organ of absorption.
_Functions of the Uterus._
2977. Now, the uterus obtains the sexual food in a living state, and
from its being such is affected by it.
2978. The uterus must be thus a world for the living germ. Two
processes are, however, indispensable for the germ, namely _nutrition_
and _respiration_; both of which are furnished by the uterus.
2979. The uterus is to be regarded as the water, the sea in which the
germ or embryo is developed. The water decomposes into basic nutritive
matter and oxygenous matter of respiration. The water of the uterus is
the blood; this is separated through the antagonism of the foetus
into mucus and oxygen. The mucus penetrates into the amnion, the oxygen
into the chorion, or the placenta.
2980. The fundus of the uterus is more arteriose than the os uteri, and
stands therefore in opposition with it.
3. _Development of the Foetus._
a. _Anatomy._
2981. The germ may be regarded as a vesicle, full of nutritive matter
or albumen, situated within the cavity of the uterus, the walls of
which act upon it.
2982. As the fundus of the uterus is the arterial pole, so it oxydizes
the vesicle and repels that part which lies close upon it. Through
this originates a saccular inversion, as in the mesentery of the
peritoneum, and the vesicle separates into three divisions. In itself
it is amnion, the inverted part is the integument of the embryo, the
tube which unites these the umbilical cord.
2983. The amnion is thus the root or primary cyst of the integument.
2984. Through continuous oxydation blood-vessels are developed upon the
surface of the amnion, which finally withdraw to constitute a special
integument, which is called chorion. Its vessels are in like manner
repelled from the fundus uteri, and prolonged into the inversion of the
umbilical cord and the embryo. The chorion is thus the root or primary
cyst of the vascular system.
2985. These two bladders, sacs, or cysts are the only general ones
which circumscribe or invest the entire embryo, because there are only
two general vegetative systems, namely, the tegumentary and vascular.
2986. The embryo has not originated freely in these shut sacs, but only
through their introversion; it is itself a portion of these sacs.
2987. The embryo properly lies external to its envelopes, as the
intestine does in respect to the mesentery.
2988. Just as the two general vegetative systems have been developed
from primary cysts, so also are there sacs for the two special
vegetative systems, or the intestinal and sexual; but, on that very
account, these cannot be general sacs, nor any longer envelop the
embryo.
2989. At the entrance of the inversion of the umbilical cord is
situated a small vesicle, which divides and is prolonged into the
two intestines. It is therefore the root or primary sac of the
intestinal system, and is called in Man the 'vesicula umbilicalis,' in
the Mammalia the 'tunica erythroides,' and in oviparous animals the
'vitellus.'
2990. In the same situation is placed another cyst, which is
prolonged into what has been called the 'urachus' and the urinary
cyst, and from which the primordial kidneys, the true kidneys, and
the sexual parts are developed by sacciform eversion. This sac is
called the 'allantois,' 'tunica allantoides,' and is consequently the
root or primary sac of the sexual system.
2991. These cysts or sacs are consequently not envelopes that serve for
the protection of the foetus, but its developmental organs, which
disappear, so soon as their prolongations into the foetus itself
enable them to exercise their functions.
2992. There are thus as many developmental sacs or cysts, as there are
vegetative systems present, viz.:
a. Two General Cysts.
1. The Vascular cyst--Chorion.
2. Tegumental cyst--Amnion.
b. Two Special Cysts.
3. The Intestinal cyst--Vitellus.
4. Sexual cyst--Allantois.
2993. It is only the vegetative systems which take root in the foetal
envelopes, but not the animal systems. There is no developmental cyst
for the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems.
2994. The persistent vegetative systems are the developmental organs
for the animal systems; as the intestine for the bones, the veins for
the muscles, the tegument or branchial sac for the nerves.
2995. The foetus consists of three floors or stories like a house,
whereof one has been based upon, or rather developed out of the other,
viz.:
a. Of the Developmental cysts.
b. " Vegetative systems.
c. " Animal systems.
2996. According to time the sacs are developed in the following
series. The first sac is that of the vitellus or the intestine,
which is also the first that is present in the development of the
animal kingdom. Upon this vitelline membrane the blood-vessels ('vasa
omphalomesenterica') are developed, are prolonged into the body with
the intestine, turn again outwards and form the chorion. From this the
amnion next separates into the envelopes, and the integument upon the
embryo. Lastly, the allantois appears, and in its prolongation the
sexual parts.
2997. Originally the whole chorion is replete all around with vessels;
but as the process of oxydation occurs most powerfully upon the fundus
uteri, so are the vessels developed most abundantly in that very
situation, and form the placenta.
2998. The placenta is no peculiar organ, but only the more energetic
part of the chorion.
2999. It must necessarily be placed around the insertion of the
umbilical cord, because at this spot the inversion takes place, on
account of the strong oxydation.
3000. The placenta is always situated upon the fundus uteri, because
it originates only through its influence. It cannot therefore begin to
suck, like the mouth of a leech, in a fortuitous or voluntary manner
anywhere. If it is found occupying some other situation, it is a proof
that the oxydizing process of the uterus has been displaced. This is
consequently an abnormal situation.
3001. Opposite to the foetal vascular system is first of all
developed the general system of animal life, namely, the nervous
system, and indeed the spinal chord, or what has been called the
'carina' or primary streak.
3002. The development of all other systems oscillates in this
antagonism of blood and nerves.
3003. In the antagonism of the placenta is formed the liver, which in
the embryo is one of the largest organs, and in its antagonism the
brain is developed.
3004. In the antagonism of the amnion the integument is evolved, and in
its antagonism the branchiæ and lungs.
3005. In obedience to the antagonism of the arteries and veins, the
vitelline sac divides into small and large intestine. The one pursues a
course towards the arterial extremity of the body, the brain, the other
towards the venous or sexual parts; mouth and anus.
3006. Finally, from the antagonism of the allantois the sexual parts
emerge at the very extremity of the body, which is placed opposite to
the mouth.
3007. The osseous and muscular system first makes its appearance, when
the vegetative parts are present.
3008. The intestines, the vessels, and the commencement of the sexual
parts are originally situated in the umbilical cord, which is itself
surrounded by the integument. The umbilical cord is therefore nothing
else than the posterior extremity of the body or abdomen, through which
the embryo respires and is nourished.
3009. The first respiration and deglutition is therefore a respiration
and deglutition effected by the sexual parts, as in the lowest animals.
b. _Functions of the Foetus._
1. _Nutrition._
3010. The juices which are contained in the developmental sacs are
nutritive juices or chyle; they contain principally albumen. The chyle
of the intestinal vesicle depends upon the vitellus.
3011. The foetal water in the amnion is derived from albumen in the
ovum; it is here secreted by the oviduct, but in the Mammalia by the
internal wall of the uterus, and absorbed by the general envelopes.
3012. The cause of this secretion resides in the decomposition of the
blood through the influence of the chorion. Thus if the maternal blood
become deoxydized, it must necessarily revert to the condition of
chyle. This chyle is the foetal water.
3013. The foetal water is absorbed by the embryo through the
integument.
3014. No blood is transferred from the mother directly to the foetus.
3015. The blood-vessels of the uterus and placenta do not open into or
communicate with each other.
3016. The foetal water corresponds to the albumen or the white of
eggs, not to the vitellus. This becomes also during incubation consumed
in the formation of the body of the chick, and not the vitelline mass,
which is first of all destined for the intestine.