Laws of Animality

Appendix 4. (2136).

Even prior to Hippocrates, the hippopotamus' instinct for rolling against sharp-edged, abrasive surfaces to open its bloated veins had been observed. Analysis of this instinctive operation shows clearly that it is produced by the synthetical force of the animal which unites in a single affection the uncomfortable sense of the bloated veins and the painful feeling of the lacerated veins. These are two passive feelings then synthesised with the active feeling connected with the movements which the animal performs by rolling itself and rubbing forcefully the unequal surfaces which slash its veins. The affection resulting from all these active and passive feelings directs the sensuous instinct to produce and keep them together because keeping them together must be the state the animal prefers.

The discomfort from the veins gorged with blood, and from the heated blood, becomes intolerable for the sensuous instinct of that animal. As a result, it tends to arrange its feeling differently by adding those movements and painful sense-experiences which taken together produce for it, as I said, a preferable condition. However, we must not imagine that it is the sensuous instinct, properly speaking, which gives rise to the extrasubjective movements as a consequence of the attempt to rearrange feeling. Nor does it give rise to the useful effect of these extrasubjective movements which consists in opening the veins and releasing blood. These movements and this effect depend upon the harmony pre-established by the Creator between subjective and extrasubjective phenomena. This harmony places animal activity in extraordinary agreement with material activity and gives rise to the preservation and well-being of the animal. Thus a troublesome irritation leads the animal to rub, bite and excoriate itself. The pain which it produces is pleasant because the intensity of the pain overcomes the more intolerable discomfort of the itchiness.

Only passive and active feelings, and passive feelings again, produce a state and adaptation of the preferred feeling. But as a result of the harmony wisely pre-established by the author of nature between the two orders of subjective and extrasubjective phenomena, the scratching produces the effect of removing not only the troublesome feeling, but the itching or irritating matter which produces it. Here we should note, however, that the activity of this matter has now entered the feeling. Removing this activity is not the effect of the harmony of which we are speaking, but the immediate effect of the sensuous instinct which feels something extrasubjective in the subjective. However, it is an effect of the harmony of which we are speaking that all the matter, not only the virtue which acts, is removed. Nevertheless, the curative effect is sometimes lacking per accidens; for example, if the scratching is excessive and produces inflammation. These exceptions depend on the necessary limitations of finite beings and have been called 'errors of nature'.