Post 01205
Created:
Modified:
If we could tell what determines the division of labor in the hive of bees or a colony of ants, we could tell what determines the division of labor among the cells in the body. A hive of bees and a colony of ants is a unit–a single organism. The spirit of the body, that which regulates all its economies, which directs all its functions, which coördinates its powers, which brings about all its adaptations, which adjusts it to its environment, which sees to its repairs, heals its wounds, meets its demands, provides more force when more is needed, which makes one organ help do the work of another, which wages war on disease germs by specific ferments, which renders us immune to this or that disease; in fact, which carries on all the processes of our physical life without asking leave or seeking counsel of us,–all this is on another plane from the mechanical or chemical–super-mechanical.
The human spirit, the brute spirit, the vegetable spirit–all are mere names to fill a void. The spirit of the oak, the beech, the pine, the palm–how different! how different the plan or idea or interior economies of each, though the chemical and mechanical processes are the same, the same mineral and gaseous elements build them up, the same sun is their architect! But what physical principle can account for the difference between a pine and an oak, or, for that matter, between a man and his dog, or a bird and a fish, or a crow and a lark? What play and action or interaction and reaction of purely chemical and mechanical forces can throw any light on the course evolution has taken in the animal life of the globe–why the camel is the camel, and the horse the horse? or in the development of the nervous system, or the circulatory system, or the digestive system, or of the eye, or of the ear?
A living body is never in a state of chemical repose, but inorganic bodies usually are. Take away the organism and the environment remains essentially the same; take away the environment and the organism changes rapidly and perishes–it goes back to the inorganic. Now, what keeps up the constant interchange–this seesaw? The environment is permanent; the organism is transient. The spray of the falls is permanent; the bow comes and goes. Life struggles to appropriate the environment; a rock, for example, does not, in the same sense, struggle with its surroundings, it weathers passively, but a tree struggles with the winds, and to appropriate minerals and water from the soil, and the leaves struggle to store up the sun’s energy. The body struggles to eliminate poisons or to neutralize them; it becomes immune to certain diseases, learns to resist them; the thing is alive. Organisms struggle with one another; inert bodies clash and pulverize one another, but do not devour one another.