Laws of Animality

Chapter 1

The law of life instinct

1781. Ens is the contrary of nothing. The concept of an ens, therefore, involves the concept of an act. The act by which an ens is, is the contrary of the act by which an ens is annihilated. If therefore, an ens is, we have to suppose that it has an act which posits it, an act to which annihilation is abhorrent. This is the virtue of self-conservation possessed by an ens.

1782. The first act with which an ens is posited necessarily abhors destruction. Its term is the form of the ens itself. But why an act should finish in one form rather than another (this accounts for diversity amongst entia) cannot be discovered by philosophy except in the free act of the Creator.

1783. But if the act with which an ens is posited is that act with which the form proper to the ens is posited, it follows that the tendency of this act must be towards positing the form in the most perfect mode. If the form were posited incompletely, the ens would exist incompletely and would gradually approximate to nothing which the act, as I said, necessarily finds abhorrent.

1784. It follows that the reason why the act does not completely posit the form of an ens cannot spring from the act itself of subsistence, but solely from some foreign cause which prevents the act from obtaining simply and totally the form to which it tends.

1785. Let us apply these ontological and cosmological principles to animal ens. The act with which an animal ens is posited, the act through which its form is posited, is what I have called life instinct. The form of an animal is its fundamental feeling, which is the determination and completion of this very act. Consequently, we have the following law of life instinct: 'Life instinct tends to posit in being the greatest possible fundamental feeling.'

1786. I do not mean that the instinct to which we have attributed production of the fundamental feeling exists prior to having produced this feeling. If there were no feeling, there would be no vital activity. But granted a fundamental feeling, we can mentally distinguish from the posited feeling the activity which posits and places the feeling in being. There are, as it were, two elements, one active and one passive, which constitute a single, indivisible feeling. This is a real distinction.

1787. The necessary functions of the life instinct are, therefore, the following:

1788. Function I. To preserve the fundamental feeling by continually producing it - This is an animating, conserving function. - Through this function the animal is what it is. It resists destruction, finds dissolution abhorrent and makes a continual effort at self-preservation. Whatever opposes this effort without altogether conquering it, but giving rise to unpleasant modification of feeling, is called pain.

1789. Function II. To activate the fundamental feeling in such a way that it has the greatest possible continuous extension. - This is the diffusive or aggregative function manifested in nutrition, and so on.

1790. Function III. To order and compose the fundamental feeling in such a way that it has the greatest degree of intensity, that is, of stable stimulus. - This is the excitatory and accumulatory function of feeling.

1791. Function IV is the result of the other three functions. This function acts on the corporeal term and hence gives matter animal organisation. - This is the organising function.

The body, as we saw, is the term of animal feeling. But if this feeling, with its natural activity, tends to restrict or extend itself, or render itself more intense, it acts on the extrasubjective body and produces in its matter those intestine and often imperceptible movements which break up and recompose the body by drawing its elements and molecules into the spaces which feeling instinctively wishes to occupy. This instinct is dedicated to increasing and positing itself in the fullest and most complete state.

1792. The organising function is simply the three primitive functions considered relative to the effects they produce in the body and in the matter proper to the body. It follows necessarily that this organising function must be distinguished at three moments:

First moment of the organising function. This consists in an action exercised by the life instinct over its term, the body. This action constantly constitutes the body as term of the fundamental feeling and prevents its separation from this feeling. - Resistance to death, retention.(3)

1793. Second moment of the organising function. This consists in drawing foreign particles within the ambit of its own feeling.(4) It achieves this by reducing and assimilating them to the rest of the body through the adaptation and natural order necessary for this purpose - Assimilation and reproducibility of living parts.(5)

1794. The third moment of the organising function. This consists in vital-motor spontaneity, that is, in the virtue through which the fundamental feeling, tending to preserve excitation and to be constantly excited in order to arise to the greatest degree of intensity, helps and continues movements excited in its term by exterior stimuli so that, through perpetuating or increasing the movements, it may perpetuate or increase appropriate excitation.

1795. The first function, which posits and continually reproduces the fundamental feeling, does not have sufficient force to retain the body which is its term, and to impede action upon it by extraneous principles tending to withdraw the body from its activity. We need to note carefully the inefficacy of this first animating and preserving function. It provides the foundation of the distinction I made between body and matter. I said that body and matter were a single ens, but I called this ens 'body' in so far as it is governed by the feeling which makes the body its term; I called it 'matter' in so far as it withdraws from any effective action of feeling and allows itself to be moved by foreign forces which, in general, I called 'sensiferous'.

It is not absurd, therefore, to conceive different degrees in the power which the sentient principle, as a life instinct, exercises over its term. The greatest of these degrees would be that with which it disposes the body by withdrawing it from the action of all other sensiferous forces or by rendering such action null.

Here the reader should notice that I do not intend to speak about the causes limiting the dominion of the vital principle over its own term, or of the power which it has to increase its term. In other words, I do not intend to affirm that the virtue of the vital principle is limited per se or that this virtue, unlimited or undefined, later receives limitation from the conditions to which it is bound. If these conditions could impede its possible development, its level of development and action would depend on them and not directly on itself. It would consequently manifest a different level of command over its term. I have spoken about this question elsewhere.

1796. The diffusing and excitatory functions can come into collision when feeling cannot diffuse itself without detriment to accumulation and excitation. In this case, one is impeded by the other. It is very difficult to establish the precise laws which preside over such a collision, but the following two at least seem to be fairly clear:

1. The maximum, natural excitation of feeling is its best state, that is, it is the natural state of any fundamental feeling. Increase in the activity of the excitatory function, therefore, increases the activity of the diffusive function; diminution of the excitatory function leads to diminution of the activity of the diffusive function.

1797. 2. If the excitatory function is weak, or its different stable excitations do not harmonise, that is, do not influence one another usefully, the diffusive function is either not sufficiently subordinated to the excitatory function or not harmonically directed by it. The animal suffers disturbance in this case, and tends to separate a part of its felt continuum from the whole.

1798. Note that relative to the two last moments of the organising function, the third serves the second. One of the effects of the third moment is to maintain the particles at such a level that they cannot become hard. Its purpose is to accelerate the vortex which reduces, assimilates and expels by favouring absorption and producing secretions and excretions.(6) When I say that it maintains the level of the particles I do not mean that it divides them in such way that it removes their contact. I mean that it diminishes and tempers them so that contact, made in fewer of their points, tends to make them round. I also mean that it keeps pores and passages suitably open, and so on.

Notes

(3) Tonicity seems to be an effect of retention manifested in the solids of a living body.

(4) By 'foreign particles' I mean those phenomena which are not universally acknowledged as proper to life, but about which we cannot deny some animation. - Moreover we have to note that in saying 'the life instinct draws brute particles to itself', I do not intend to affirm that it operates over a distance. I cannot conceive any action exercised over a distance. But I will explain this concept later.

(5) Tommasini, Betera, Bufalini, Medici, Gallini, and all modern Italian physiologists and doctors have spoken about the reproducibility of living bodies as though it were some special property. Dr. Luigi Emiliani in his Memoria, lauded by the Italian Society of Sciences based at Modena, replied to the following question: 'Can we determine if the ideas which modern schools of medicine propose about stimulability and stimulation, and so on, are sufficiently exact, etc.? He assigns the following laws to reproducibility:'First, reproducibility does not act with the same energy at various ages.'Second, living tissues found in certain conditions can regenerate themselves when some portion has been cut away.'Third, in general the level of reproducibility is in inverse proportion to the so-called perfection or organic composition of living bodies.'Fourth, the level of reproducibility is different in different parts of the same living body.'Fifth, through this force certain new parts necessary for the development of organised bodies can be formed, granted certain conditions.''Sixth, reproducibility can alter and degenerate notably at the same time as it increases. This explains why certain parts can be formed, and develop a tissue and composition different from those which naturally compose the body.'

(6) Stahl's school considered movements which produce secretions and excretions as effects of the action of the soul. The great man's dissertation, De febris rationali ratione (Magdeburg, 1701) should be read. He reduces secretory and excretory movements to two classes: to the beating of the heart and the tonicity of parts. He says of the first: 'Humours, namely blood and its accompanying lymph, are moved around and, at each pulse, are brought to all the porous parts.' He then says about tonic movement, 'The general, twofold service or direction is noted according to the different cardinal regions, interior or exterior, of the body'. The heart-beat cannot separate and expel in a different direction to the extent achieved by the tonic movement: 'This comes about as a result of the tone, proportionately serviced, of the secretory and excretory parts when these parts are relaxed for the sake of secretion and excretion, and made to open. Neighbouring or joined parts, or even parts in their entirety, rub against one another in such a way that the humours which should be transmitted from these to the part which excretes are put under pressure from all sides to release their excreta in great quantity and in a short time.'