Chapter 10

Nature's Healing Forces Arise

From The Life Instinct;

Disruptive Forces From The Sensuous Instinct

401. We must postpone an explanation of the sensuous instinct's more complex actions, and deal with an important consequence of what has been said, namely, that the two primary, active animal faculties which we have called life instinct and sensuous instinct are the source of two kinds of forces which are occasionally opposed to each other: the healing forces of nature and the disruptive forces.

402. If this consequence had been carefully noted, the quarrel between Brown and the doctors who preceded him could have been solved. His opponents maintained as a certain principle that nature should be followed in the cure of diseases, because nature is endowed with a hidden power to restore what it has lost and to repair its disorders, and therefore never errs in its instincts. Brown claimed that sometimes nature erred, and consequently that its guidance should not be trusted. As proof he indicated the case of animals that have been starved for a long time: they refuse the food they need but will take water, which will only weaken them further.(185)

I believe that the constant tradition of medicine is true. There is a healing force in animal nature, and this force gives rise to a kind of infallible instinct which works to overcome illness and produce health. I also think that along with this healing power there is sometimes another force or instinct which disrupts the action of the first instinct, changing its healing effect into a harmful one.

403. I said that I deduce the healing force from the life instinct, and the disruptive force from the sensuous instinct. I do so as follows.

The sole purpose of the life instinct in all its actions is to produce one, stimulated feeling. By doing so, it gives life to the body; it is essentially a vivifier. Perfect health is nothing more than perfect life. We said that the material forces of a body which has to receive life must be so harmoniously composed that they can receive without resistance the one, single action of the vivifying principle. Hence, if this harmonious composition is lacking, a struggle must ensue between the unbalanced, disorganised material forces, which are opposed to receiving the unity of life, and the soul trying to give them life. Thomas Campanella's opinion, which was later espoused by Stahl's followers, seems therefore to be reasonable. He said that fever must be considered as a war of the spirit against illness.(186) We, however, go further and say that war is present in all illness, because the soul tries to subjugate the body to its rule and give it the form of life. Not only fever but all symptoms and phenomena of illness come from this source.(187)

If we consider the matter carefully, there is no doubt that the soul cannot exercise its action unless the body is first disposed to receive the action. The body's disposition consists in a fixed choice of principles and in suitable composition and organisation. Granted this, the soul simply gives the body a final, complementary act which constitutes the life it is capable of. The term to which the soul properly tends is that of giving this final act to the body, an act which certainly brings with it a complex of harmonious movements, a relevant mobility, tension, etc. But this final act requires preceding acts or (to use Tommasini's expression) preparatory processes as its condition. When the soul finds the body in imperfect possession of the preceding acts, it uses the same force with which it posits the body in the final act to impel the body to posit itself more perfectly in the preceding acts, of which the final act is a continuation and complement. The soul is helped in this by the wonderful compagination of parts prepared by the wise Author of the animal body.

We have said that the soul or feeling principle acts in the continuum (a necessary condition, as we have seen, for the existence of extended feeling). If we consider this carefully, we have no difficulty in attributing principally to this vital animal action the digestive, circulatory, secretory, absorbing and nutritive phenomena, in fact, all the phenomena of animal life.(188) Similarly, we have no difficulty understanding that a lesion in some part of the animal can immediately bring about a disruption in the circulation and all other bodily functions. In the same way we explain the extraordinary activity not only of remedies but also of poisons. We can also understand why a grain of tartar emetic or ipecacuanha, minute in proportion to the effect of its mechanical action, notably disrupts the whole body when taken orally. It is always the vital action of the soul that is affected and that reacts according to its laws. Because the soul has extension as the term of its action, it can make its energy simultaneously felt in many parts and organs.(189) But this energy is never harmful; it continually strives to bring the body to the act of greatest life.

404. If this energy is allowed to act unhindered, it never fails in its purpose, although its operation can be disrupted by the sensuous instinct which, as we have said, is the source of harmful animal forces.(190) The sensuous instinct is of course designed by nature to act in harmony with the life instinct and to help it in every way. We cannot doubt that it will act in this way, unless sense is defective or unduly stimulated. For example, smell and taste are clearly ordered by nature to inform animals of both suitable and unsuitable foods. Cattle at pasture distinguish principally by smell the poisonous grasses and avoid them. They rarely eat the tussock-grass that grows in great quantities in the Alps or the white hellebore that abounds in the fields of Piedmont. Even in the case of harmful grasses, cattle choose what best suits their species. Moreover, smell is used by the instinct of animals to guide them to medicinal plants. Dogs can be seen searching the countryside; they find and eat a plant which they normally never eat, and then they vomit and have diarrhea. But despite these harmful effects they are in better health. We cannot doubt that the sensuous instinct, in its normal state, helps and acts harmoniously with the life instinct in which it originates. What I am saying, however, is that this instinct is sometimes subject to generally momentary alterations which disrupt the action of the life instinct itself.

405. We should not be surprised at this. Although the sensuous instinct draws its energy from the life instinct, it has another purpose. The life instinct tends towards the fundamental feeling and produces it; the sensuous instinct tends to the enjoyment of the modifications of the fundamental feeling because they give it a more varied, intense pleasure. Properly speaking, the end of animality, that is, the enjoyment of the greatest delight possible, is to be found in this more intense and ever new pleasure extracted, so to speak, by modifying the fundamental feeling. Obviously the reckless, over-excited tendency to possess the extreme pleasure found in the modifications of the fundamental feeling can upset both the fundamental feeling itself and the action of the life instinct controlling the fundamental feeling, especially if the organic composite is already defective in some way. Similarly, the sensuous instinct, for the opposite reason, can be too violently stimulated and flee the consequent pain, which is also a modification of the fundamental feeling and animal nature's greatest evil. And because the effort to avoid the pain is so great, the vital activity can be upset. Hunger, for example, sometimes makes an animal eat something harmful. The stimulus drives it so hard that time is denied for the use of the senses which would allow it to avoid the danger. Hunger has been given as the reason why Swedish, but not Italian goats, devour tussock-grass.

406. We must investigate the action of the sensuous instinct and see how it can directly alter and harm the action of the life instinct.

It is true that this happens less frequently in animals than in humans whose intelligent principle gives an extraordinary impetus to the passions. It thus upsets the balance which, according to the wisdom of nature, ought to be continually maintained between the sensuous and life instincts. Although intelligence gives this unbridled thrust to the passions, which are acts of the sensuous instinct, the passions themselves are the proximate cause of the change that follows in the life instinct. In other words, feeling-instinct, not intelligence, is the sole remote cause.

Let us see how the sensuous instinct, by means of the different passions to which it is subject, disrupts and even entirely suspends or removes the action of the soul's life instinct.

407. Animal passions have mainly three sources: the external senses, the imagination and the association of the external senses with the imagination. By giving examples of three kinds of passion corresponding to these three sources, we can see how the sensuous instinct harms the functions of the life instinct.

Taste is one example of the external senses and is the source of the passion of greed; sadness is an example relative to the imagination and arises from a misfortune we imagine has happened but in fact has not; fear, or sudden terror caused in another, is an example of the association of feeling with the imagination. These three passions, greed, sadness and fear all belong to the sensuous instinct. Let us now examine the influence they have on the life instinct, whose beneficial action they can change or impede.

408. With regard to greed, we should note that an animal, when taking food, does not experience a feeling simply on its tongue or where the taste buds are located in its mouth. We tend to think solely of this feeling, but there is another feeling, unobserved and less local than the first, which seems to reach the entire nervous system or at least a large section of it.

In order to become aware of two simultaneous feelings, one local and the other general, which are aroused when food is taken, let us consider the effect of something sweet. If several people taste such a substance they will all say that it has a sweet taste. Their judgment is uniform, and therefore the substance is, relative to the local sensation of taste, the same for them all. But there will be some who like it, some who do not, and some in between. Simultaneously with the sweet sensation, therefore, which they all equally experienced, there is a different experience. The same can be said about a bitter substance: all will affirm the bitterness, but some will like it, others will not, in varying degree. The same will be true of any taste whatsoever.

Now, if only the simple, local sensation of taste is in question, it would seem that the sweet taste should please all, and the bitter no one. All evidently agree that the sweet taste considered purely in itself is pleasant, and the bitter unpleasant. This is so true that we usually accept `sweet' as synonymous with `pleasant'. We can conclude therefore that when people dislike a sweet taste but not a bitter taste, they do so not because they do not sense the sweet taste as pleasant, and the bitter as unpleasant, but because simultaneously with the final sensation of sweetness or bitterness in their mouths, there is another, contrary sensation which is propagated throughout all, or nearly all, the nervous system. This feeling is more universal, and because it pervades, as it were, the whole animal, it dominates the first, more restricted feeling. The animal, influenced by this stronger feeling, rejects the sweet taste not in itself but because of the almost hidden disturbance accompanying it, and chooses instead the bitter taste not in itself nor because it is bitter, but because the unpleasantness of the bitter taste in its mouth is compensated more than adequately by the pleasant taste diffused throughout the whole animal.

409. We must note that the feeling controlling the animal's good health is not the limited, local feeling of taste (this feeling merely indicates the effect produced by the substance in the taste buds of the mouth), but the other more widespread, less observable feeling, which follows the first. This more diffused feeling often reshapes and changes our judgments about the first feeling so authoritatively and decisively that our judgment about the local taste remains suppressed and unnoticed. Hence we say absolutely: `I like the bitter taste', or: `I do not like the sweet taste'. We do not say: `I do not like the bitter taste in my mouth but I like it in its total effect all over me', or: `I like the sweet taste on my tongue but not in my being as a whole'.

410. Therefore, when the feeling of universal pleasure or displeasure which follows the local sensation of touch prevails in the animal, the sensuous instinct of taste is in total harmony with and subservient to the life instinct. Vice versa, the sensuous instinct disrupts and harms the life instinct in its functions when the former follows the false indication of taste rather than the taste which, after the taking of food, is an indication of the total feeling, and a firm guide of what helps or harms the animal.

When an animal is perfect, as nature generally makes it, it is never deceived in its taste. Its sensuous instinct constantly takes the total feeling as its guide. This latter feeling can be called the alimentary sense,(191) and guides the sick animal to foods with an insipid or unpleasant taste which it does not usually eat. The first effects in such a case are vomiting and diarrhea which upset the animal at first but finally restore it to health.(192)

411. The taste sensation, however, can and often does prevail over the alimentary sensation. This happens principally or solely in human beings due to the passion of greed. The sensuous instinct is deceived and, as the source of all the evils of intemperance, does great harm to the life instinct.

412. We pass now to passions arising from the imagination. The activity of the imagination is a branch of the activity of the sensuous instinct, and nobody can be ignorant of the effects of the imagination on our bodily health.

There can be few diseases in which the imagination is not involved, to both the harm and advantage of sick people. I shall take one case only, rabies. It is generally known that rabies sometimes develops through the action of the phantasy stimulated by belief in having been bitten by a mad dog. Such an illness can then be cured by the contrary persuasion.

Dr. Barbantini, of Lucca, described a case that took place in 1817. A 23-year-old hunter called Carmassi had a dog which was attacked by another dog. When Carmassi seized his dog by the tail and tried to pull it from the fight, the dog turned and bit him slightly in the leg. At first, the young man paid no heed to the wound, but later, noticing blood, he washed it and covered it with a medicinal herb. Three days later the wound was dry, and Carmassi decided to go hunting the next day. However, because the dog had disappeared he began to think it had rabies. The next day he was depressed and avoided his friends. Symptoms of rabies, particularly the abhorrence of water, started to appear. In the evening he heard that different people had been bitten by a mad dog in a neighbouring village. He became more upset, told everyone to leave, and refused all human contact. On the fifth day some people who had gone to the house because of the great noise he was making found him deranged and grasping his rifle. The local doctor arrived. Although Carmassi knew him well, he was frightened and asked who the doctor was. Eventually, after alternating bouts of dark gloom and violence, Carmassi was bound. His fits continued for two days, and he neither ate nor drank; he made an effort to drink but as soon as the liquid touched his mouth he violently threw it away. On the ninth day his dog was found, in perfect health. The sick man would not believe it and asked to see the animal before he died. With great joy the dog jumped on to the bed of his master and showed his affection in the usual way. Carmassi calmed down, and slowly regained his health. After four days he was ready to go hunting again.(193) In this case, we clearly see how the sensuous instinct disrupted the functions of the life instinct.

413. The next case of fear is an example of the passions that arise through the association of the external senses and the phantasy. It is another factual proof of the power of the sensuous instinct not only to disturb but, when stimulated in an extraordinary way, to suspend in great part the action of the life instinct. It is a case of catalepsy recently suffered by a certain Karl Haag, who was cured in the Viennese military hospital of the Emperor Joseph Academy. The case was widely reported in the newspapers of 1823 and 1824.

On the 6th June 1823, this 33-year-old had a fit. As I have said, such an experience or passion concerns the sensuous instinct. In this case it caused the patient to lose completely the faculty of moving his muscles, a faculty belonging to the life instinct. His limbs remained fixed in the position in which others placed them. For three months he kept his eyes rigidly open, then, for sixteen months, firmly closed, unable to make the least movement. Tears sometimes filled his eyes and his pale cheeks flushed when his illness was discussed in his presence. He could take no liquid food.(194) The life instinct had suspended the action of his body in the case of the faculty of voluntary movements, and even generally, in the case of external sensations, but it continued to perform the essential functions of life, such as circulation, respiration, maintenance of natural heat, perspiration, etc. After nearly a year and a half of this almost total suspension of the action of the sensuous instinct, the invalid began to show signs of returning sensation. He slowly emerged from his deep coma and began to move, but speech returned only later and with great difficulty. The life instinct, therefore, regained control of certain muscles before others, and then finally its full activity which had been suspended for so long. In the end he returned to full health.(195)

All this indicates that the sensuous instinct can be excessively stimulated, and that this excessive action can disrupt, suspend and completely block out the action of the life instinct.(196) The sensuous instinct, therefore, is the origin of the forces we have called `disruptive' of animal life, and they should be seriously investigated by professors of medicine.

414. It is not within the scope of this work to examine the many ways in which the sensuous instinct can disrupt the action of the life instinct, although research of this kind would be most worthwhile. Instead, we shall conclude this chapter with the following comment. The relationship between the soul's sensuous activity and life activity is new proof that both these activities proceed from a single, unique principle and derive from the primitive act itself by which the soul exists, except that one proceeds from the other as a second act proceeds from a first.

415. To repeat: it is not extraordinary that the sensuous activity, although principally derived from the life activity, should have great influence over the latter. By acting on the organisation which is a condition of the life instinct, the sensuous instinct exerts a indirect influence on the life instinct.

(185) I do not know if the example is sufficient proof. It is certain that water is not entirely lacking in nutrients, and that nature cannot be restored in one big jump; we have to build up gradually from a small beginning. People who have been frozen are treated in this way; if they were warmed all at once, they would die. Nature indicates this procedure by the natural desire for water; that is, we must begin with very light food and proceed gradually to solids.

(186) François Boissier, of Sauvages, in his Theoria Febris (Montpellier, 1738), followed Stahl's teaching. According to him, fever is caused by the soul's efforts to remove the obstacles which deny it freedom of bodily movement. But it would be better to say that the soul tends to give the body that fullness of life which constitutes the purpose of the act by which the soul first informs the body. Campanella's opinion, written long before Stahl, can be seen in his Medicina, bks. 3 & 7.

(187) The origin of pain is found here. Pain arises from the resistance encountered by the soul in its effort to animate the body and produce the unified, stimulated feeling. This opinion resembles that of Canaveri (cf. Dell'Economia della Vitalità in addition to his Sul dolore), who observed that our capacity to feel pain is increased by what weakens the body but decreased by what increases the vital energy. Pain robs us of sleep, appetite and the vigour of our limbs. He concluded, after many thorough investigations, that the efficient cause of pain is the diminution of vitality in some part. These observations confirm our opinion. According to us, whatever happens in any feeling also happens in the production of pain: two causes, the soul and the body, must operate. For the body to contribute to the production of pain, the conditions necessary for its animation must be present; otherwise, pain would be entirely foreign to it. The body must also lack one of the conditions which make it suitable for receiving the soul's action in all its fullness, an action which would give the body perfect health and impede any pain. Such an origin of pain explains the varying action of stimuli, the different kinds of pain, and the different levels and phenomena accompanying it.

(188) We have only to consider secretory phenomena for a moment to be convinced of what I am saying. All the excretory ducts, the stenonian, warthonian, choledoch, pancreatic, etc. have their orifices open on mucous surfaces in contact with many kinds of fluids which pass over or lie on the surfaces. However, the only fluids that penetrate the ducts are those suited to each duct. This wonderful, selective affinity between the ducts and the nature of the fluids cannot be explained by any mechanism or chemical affinity. Once the animal is dead, the activity of these ducts and fluids ceases. The effect is principally an effect of the vital act which the animal imparts to the organic body.

(189) Stahl's followers went too far by making will intervene in everything (the faculty is completely absent in animals, which have only instinct), but others, like Joubert, also went too far by attributing everything to material forces. Joubert's opinions are reported by Sprengel in the sixth volume of his history of medicine. Furthermore, the following fact is clear proof that the soul intervenes in producing extraordinary effects of remedies: when the soul's action on the body is suspended, or better, greatly restricted (as happens with cataleptics), emetics and drastic remedies have no effect.

(190) We have seen that pain arises in the soul from its struggle to animate the body totally, while the body, because of some lesion or other absent condition, is not fully disposed to receive complete animation (cf. 403). But if the pain reaches a certain level, it can produce some disruption in the life instinct where it originates, and can thus damage health even more, particularly through the apprehension or general affection it causes in the animal. However, if the pain sometimes causes harm to the healthy state, we must note that everything the animal does as a result of this pain belongs to the sensuous instinct. It is therefore the sensuous instinct itself that causes disruption in the vital animal forces.

(191) Here we can also see the advantage of simple, natural foods and the disadvantage of mixed foods. The alimentary sense is obviously present in simple foods and allows us to know which substances are healthy or harmful. But in the case of mixed foods the indication of the alimentary sense is confused, because the different foods of the mixture conflict with each other.

(192) A similar phenomenon can be observed in animals in the case of other senses also. Animals sometimes submit to actions that are painful to some part of their body because a universal sense informs them that such actions are helpful. The well-known lion which had a thorn removed from its paw must have felt an acute pain at the time of the extraction, but nevertheless allowed the action and later showed its gratitude to the slave who had done the good deed.

(193) Cf. the Giornale di Fisica, Chimica, Storia naturale, Medicina, ecc. of professors Brugnatelli, Brunacci and Configliacchi, Pavia, 1817, vol. 10. Dr. Barbantini notes in his story that in the majority of known cases of delayed rabies the imagination is stimulated by the memory of some earlier, forgotten bite. He says this applied to the case discussed by Chirac and mentioned by the translator of Weikard's Elementi di medicina pratica, vol. 6.

(194) What happened in many other cases of catalepsy also happened in this case: the strongest stimulants such as cantharides, opium, valerian, volatile massages as well as emetics and other drastic internal remedies were ineffective. This shows that the medicinal activity of the remedies is due to the co-operation of the soul's life instinct, as I said earlier (cf. 403). When this co-operation ceases, the only activity left to the medicines is their mechanical or chemical forces. I generally call these forces material activity, an activity which is very limited in its effects when compared with the effect resulting from the association of these material forces with the life principle.

(195) The two following incidents concerning birds illustrate the effect of terror in animals. After a cat had frightened a blackbird in its cage, the person who went to its aid found it lying on its back, bathed in sweat. Later its feathers fell out, to be replaced by perfectly white feathers. In the other case, a linnet bit the finger of a drunken man, who took it out of its cage and pulled out all its feathers. The poor bird survived, but grew white feathers (Bibliot. Ital., Dec. 1831).

(196) Note that the action is not only partly suspended but entirely removed. Pliny the Younger relates (bk. 7, lett. 30; bk. 9, lett. 12) that a certain Publicius died as a result of his imagination: the man seemed to see Pliny attacking him with a dagger. Theodoric is said to have died from terror at the sight of a fish head served to him. He thought it was the head of Symmmachus whom he had had put to death. We all know that passions can reach a point where they cause death, and passions, as I have said, are always acts of the sensuous instinct.