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PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 243
so obvious, that, on impartial reflection from this standpoint,
it seems almost absurd to persist in making the body serve
two masters by deriving its actions from two radically dif
ferent origins and then ascribing on the one hand the
movements of our arms and legs, of our eyes, lips, throat,
tongue and lungs, of the facial and abdominal muscles, to
the will while on the other hand the action of the ;
heart,
the movements of the veins, the peristaltic movements of
the intestines, the absorption by the intestinal villi and
glands and all those movements which accompany secre
tion, are supposed to proceed from a totally different, ever
mysterious principle of which we have no knowledge, and
which is designated by names such as vitality, archeus,
spiritus animales, vital energy, instinct, all of which mean
1
no more than a?.
It is curious and instructive to see the trouble that
excellent writer, Treviranus 3
takes, to find out in the
lower animals, such as infusoria and zoophyta, which
movements are voluntary, and which are what he calls auto
matic or physical, i.e. merely vital. He founds his inquiry
upon the assumption that he has to do with two primarily
different sources of movement ; whereas in truth they all
proceed from the will, and the whole difference consists in
1 It is especially in secretive processes that we cannot avoid re
cognising a certain selection of the materials fitted for each purpose,
consequently a free will in the secretive organs, which must even be
assisted by a certain dull sensation, and in virtue of which each secreting
organ only extracts from the same blood that particular secretion which
suits it and no others : for instance, the liver only absorbs bile from the
blood flowing through it, sending the rest of the blood on, and likewise
the salivary glands and the pancreas only secrete saliva, the kidneys
only urine, &c. &c. We may therefore compare the organs of secretion
to different kinds of cattle grazing on one and the same pasture-land,
each of which only browses upon the one sort of herb which suits its own
particular appetite. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
2
Treviranus,
" Die Erscheinungen und Gesetze des Organischen
Lebens," vol. L pp. 178-185.