Chapter 4
Classification Of Natural Beings
72. We have said:
1st. There are two series of phenomena in nature: those which produce sensations, and can therefore be called sensiferous, and those that are the sensations themselves. The former have body or matter as their principle, and are extrasubjective because they arise and terminate outside the feeling subject. The latter have soul as their principle, and are subjective because they arise and terminate in the feeling subject.
2nd. Investigation reveals two different states of the body as principle of the extrasubjective phenomena. In the first state the body is said to be alive, in the second, dead. In both states the body remains the principle of extrasubjective phenomena alone, but the phenomena differ according to the living or dead state of the body. These different kinds of phenomena determine whether we say the body is alive or dead.
3rd. The first kind of extrasubjective phenomena, by which we affirm a body is alive, is further divided into the two classes of externally and internally observable phenomena. Internal observation can be carried out only on our own body, and it is precisely for this reason that we call it our own body.
73. 4th. If we restrict the phenomena which indicate a living body to those which fall under our external observation, we find that they are simply external effects and signs, from which we argue that the body is alive. On the other hand, if the phenomena indicating a body is alive belong to our own internal experience (for example, when we feel ourselves to be alive by means of internal pleasures and pains), such phenomena are not merely effects of the life of the body but actions carried out by the living body directly upon the feeling principle. Hence:
5th. If we judge solely by external signs that a body is alive or dead, we can sometimes be mistaken, as in the case of apparent death, especially from asphyxia. If we know through internal experience that a body is alive, we cannot err, because we feel the living body's action directly, and not simply the effects or signs of the action.
74. 6th. The definitions of life given by naturalists are simply a collection of external signs by which we can know or conjecture that a body is alive. These definitions do not contain the proper notion of bodily life, because this notion is found only `in the body's power to act constantly and directly on the soul, producing what is commonly called the feeling of life'.
7th. Consequently, we can say that life always refers to sensation, and properly speaking, resides in the soul where alone sensation is present. Nevertheless, if life means the union of a body with a feeling soul, life is also attributed to the body. In a word, we call life feeling or the term and proximate cause of feeling.
75. These precise notions allow us to form a rule for dividing natural beings. The indisputable foundation of the first division of natural beings must be, on the one hand, those beings which lack feeling and give no sign of feeling, and on the other, beings which have feeling and manifest the phenomena of feeling. The former do not indicate a truly subjective, internal existence, but the latter do. The two most general categories or classes of natural beings, therefore, are:
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I Class. Extrasubjective beings lacking
feeling. |
76. From this we can draw another corollary. When we wish to assign different natural objects to these two general classes, we have to note their internal and external structure and organisation, their forces and relative properties, and finally their functions, because all these observed qualities constitute different systems of extrasubjective phenomena. But we must not take them as the basis of the first, fundamental classification except in their relationship with the feeling they signify and of which they give some degree of probability. This probability or certainty allows us to place them in one of the two classes indicated.
77. Classical writers on natural sciences have always proceeded in this way.
In recent times, only a few, influenced by materialism and the accompanying
decay of dialectic, have deviated from this important canon of natural science.
Consequently, they have not gone beyond the external phenomena, considering
such phenomena in themselves and not as an indication of internal sensation.
If Linnaeus, Pallas and other naturalists have placed amongst animals certain
productions that Tournefort has placed amongst vegetables, they have done so
because they thought they had observed signs of sensitivity. They did not stop
at considering the organisation and other external characteristics in
themselves, but considered them as signs of internal, subjective phenomena.
78. However, a more thorough examination could reveal that the signs from which Linnaeus and others believed they could deduce the presence of sensitivity, did not demonstrate the existence of feeling with sufficient certainty. In this case, the classification of those natural objects would have to be left in doubt. Spallanzani himself raised doubts of this kind about some natural beings. He says:
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Could not the effects which seem to indicate feeling in certain animals be simply the result of a merely mechanical force. If we start with the monkey and descend through the different levels of animals, we see that the organs which indicate feeling always become either less in number or harder to identify, so that eventually, in the case of polyps and sea nettles, we judge their feeling by the movements of their contractions and dilations, their capture of prey, and their ingestion, etc. But such a judgment is not really sound because many other kinds of movement resemble these, for instance, a wasp cannot use its sting without detaching the sting from its abdomen; a frog's heart beats for a long time after its removal from the body, and intestines separated from the lower stomach and cut in pieces continue to undulate. If we do not doubt that the movements of the sting, heart and intestines depend on the force of irritability, why cannot the movements of polyps and sea nettles depend on similar causes, especially as these animals indicate pronounced irritability? |
The following considerations support these doubts:
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A polyp(37) does not hunt its prey, nor search for it with its tentacles.(38) When a foreign body touches the tentacles, they seize it and carry it to the mouth; the polyp swallows the object whatever it is. If the object is digestible, the polyp feeds off it, but if the object has remained intact for some time in the alimentary canal, the polyp rejects it whole. We must not look for feeling in this series of actions, nor in the movements of the leaves of the dionea musipola which, when touched by a fly or other insect, closes by crisscrossing its spines or edges like the teeth of a mousetrap. It is true that movements such as these cannot be attributed to feeling because polyps often swallow indifferently their own tentacles together with their prey, but the tentacles, being indigestible, exit later from their stomach like many other bodies. |
79. It may be suggested that the phenomena exhibited by zoophytes and similar beings of doubtful nature cannot be reduced to the phenomena of the vegetable kingdom, but this is not sufficient reason for allocating them to the animal kingdom. The irritability of zoophytes could be a property entirely of its own and therefore constitute a new kingdom, neither animal nor vegetable.(39) If this were so, the kingdom would be simply a subdivision of the large class of extrasubjective beings from which the class of animals or subjective beings would always remain distinct. Thus, wherever the existence of irritable but non-feeling beings were identified, the class of extrasubjective beings in nature would be divided into three, not two kingdoms, as follows:
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I. Inorganic minerals. |
80. This simple suggestion does not seem entirely baseless. Certainly, irritability and contractility do not need to be accompanied by apparent sensitivity in order to exist, because the organs of sensitivity differ greatly from the organs of irritability. Irritability continues in the body even when all feeling has ceased, and some argue that it is present in the human body up to two or three hours after death. A frog's heart continues its contractions for thirty hours after extraction from the body; carp, eels and colubers, when cut into pieces, twist and turn for some hours after the severance of the nerves to the brain. Bacon says he personally saw the heart of an executed man which had been torn from the body and thrown into a fire, jump several times half a metre into the air and then lesser heights for a period of seven or eight minutes. Finally, where irritability is greater in an animal, sensitivity seems less: for instance, in cold-blooded animals whose bodies exhibit great irritability and little sensitivity, while warm-blooded animals seem to have greater sensitivity and less irritablility.(40) Because it can be satisfactorily demonstrated, therefore, that irritability and contractility(41) do not definitely indicate feeling in a body, why could they not be the distinguishing mark of a separate kingdom of beings?(42)
Notes
(37) A tiny, sightless, gelatinous animal found on rocks.
(38) Long thread-like arms that move in all directions.
(39) The movements observable when the sensitive mimosa pudica is touched are not attributed to irritability because the movements are simply the leaves bending back on themselves at the point of articulation. Nor do the branches and leaves become shorter or extend themselves rapidly several times, which is typical of the phenomenon of irritability. It was thought that something similar to this phenomenon had been observed in the male fern of Dodoneus. Swammerdam observed that, when the husks are fully ripe, the dried, rigid funiculus suddenly extends in a straight line dividing itself into two half spheres and shooting the seeds forcefully into the air. But such phenomena are simply the action of elasticity. The same can be said about similar phenomena observed in other plants.
(40) We should note (as has already been observed) that, prescinding from the contractility or irritability of these bodies, their other properties indicate a closer proximity to the species of less perfect rather than more perfect vegetables. Thus some zoophytes were mistaken for algae or other cryptogams and not classified as plants with a more perfect organisation.
(41) Undoubtedly, the phenomenon of elasticity has some analogy with animal contractility. Elasticity is due apparently to a displacement of the elements constituting the elastic molecules which, however, do not exceed their mutual sphere of attraction. Thus, if they are moved by force, they return to their natural position, determined by their centre of gravity, as soon as the violence disturbing them ceases. But before coming to rest, they oscillate as a result of the impulse they have received. Is it not possible that a similar displacement and replacement of elements takes place in contractile molecules, thus producing the repeated contractions of the fibre? Is it possible to know the mobility of the elements of contractile molecules, the laws of their mutual attraction, and the weightless agents that are simultaneously involved in producing the phenomenon without any apparent need of animal action?
(42) Brown considered that irritability and sensitivity both depended on excitability. Dr. Marzari refuted this system when he observed that these two properties, because of their great difference, cannot be confused nor reduced to a single principle.
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