Chapter 11

How the proposed theory explains the acts of animal nature

1929. I have discussed the struggle between the life instinct and brute matter. Is there also a struggle between the life and sensuous instincts?
The fact that I deduced the healing forces of nature from the life instinct and the disruptive forces from the sensuous instinct seems to call for an affirmative answer.(58) Furthermore, observation undoubtedly attests to this apparent struggle.
But perhaps the struggle is only apparent. Could the two instincts not be reconciled in the way that the brute forces and life instinct were reconciled? If a radical struggle in nature seems strange, it is even more strange to conceive the animal's two instincts in opposition to one another. After all, the two instincts are only the activity of one totally simple principle.

1930. This question is the same as that concerning errors in nature, about which Stahl wrote a well-known dissertation. He understood the word 'nature' in the way Hippocrates understood it. Following in the steps of Hippocrates, Galen's definition (*) [App., no. 3] (*) [nature is a warm spirit moved by itself]. This definition is substantially the definition of the word in its common and proper sense given by everyone. A discussion of this important question is fitting here where we are discussing how sympathies can be explained by the simplicity of the sensitive principle and the natural laws of its operation.

1931. Does nature truly err, and are its errors the cause of disease in the human body? And if this is the case, can we explain the errors simply by attributing them (as the animists did) to the precipitation of an upset soul, to the distress of a frightened soul and to the inconstancy of a soul distraught by anxieties?(59) If so, we would need to explain the precipitation, the distress and the inconstancy, because such defects cannot constitute the nature of anything, and it is the nature of the soul that determines its actions. Indeed, I would say that nature acts according to necessary, infallible laws, from which it never diverges. What we call defects or errors are not such in themselves but are certain relationships which we contemplate and which form our opinions. In a word, the action of nature is, in my opinion, always the same, whether we judge that it acts correctly or whether, because of our opinions, we attribute errors to it.

1932. Let us investigate therefore the reason for the apparent errors of animal nature, for the apparent struggle which sometimes arises between the life and sensuous instincts.

What I say will show that the life instinct, source of the healing laws of nature, is sometimes limited in its beneficent tendency by brute forces, and that the sensuous instinct perturbs and directly disorders animal nature without diverging in any way from its own laws.

1933. The distinction between subjective and extrasubjective phenomena explains how the sensuous instinct can disorder animal nature without diverging from the laws which it follows constantly in all its actions. As we have seen, the two parallel series of phenomena have no similarity between them. Thus one could not be mentally deduced a priori from the other. The soul is only feeling, and there is nothing in its awareness which has not previously been in its feeling. A soul which has experienced a subjective phenomenon without ever experiencing the corresponding extrasubjective phenomenon, would not know this second phenomenon, and could never know it however much it reflected on the first. In fact, it could not even suspect the existence of the second phenomenon.

1934. Our cognition of the relationship between the two series of phenomena is acquired therefore only by experience; the reason why we can pass mentally from a subjective to an extrasubjective phenomenon, is only because experience has often shown us their co-existence. Having learnt in this way, we very readily judge the existence of the extrasubjective phenomenon from the existence of the subjective phenomenon because we habitually form such judgments.

An example will make this clearer. It is a well-known fact that a person whose leg has been amputated suffers pain at the place of the missing leg. He is certainly mistaken when referring the pain to that place, but the cause of his false judgment is the readiness with which the mind argues habitually from the subjective phenomenon of pain to the extrasubjective phenomenon of the locality of the leg. If he had never before seen or touched his leg, he would not have known that he had it. He would have had no awareness of its external form nor of its locality relative to the other parts of his body. He would certainly have had the fundamental feeling of the leg, devoid however of the shapes relative to the measured space extending beyond his body.

The locality of the leg, which involves a relationship with external measured space, has been made known by the external or extrasubjective experience, an experience totally different from the subjective experience of pain which he is conscious of suffering. But because his leg has come under his gaze and touch and thus become an extrasubjective phenomenon for him, and because he also feels the pain (a subjective phenomenon), he has been able on many occasions in his life to compare the two phenomena and recognise that the subjective pain was in the extrasubjective locality.

This observation could never have been made if throughout his life he had experienced only one of the two phenomena, that is, either the pain or the extrasubjective perception of his leg. However, after experiencing both, and knowing that one corresponds to the locality of the other, he has formed an habitual judgment and become convinced that the one could not exist without the other. Hence, after the amputation of his leg, he refers the pain to the extrasubjective locality which remains in his imagination.

1935. Extrasubjective phenomena therefore accompany but are not included in subjective phenomena. They are not of the same nature as subjective phenomena nor an adequate effect of them. What then is the proper action of the sensuous instinct?

Its action is limited solely to subjective phenomena. As I said, the activity of feeling consists in its ability to adapt and accommodate itself in the mode most natural to it. Because its nature consists in pleasure, its most natural mode is that which is most pleasing, comfortable, easy, less tiring and less painful. All these epithets basically indicate a mode which predominantly involves pleasure. Granted this, the sensuous instinct does not aim at producing extrasubjective phenomena outside its own sphere. These follow upon subjective phenomena as a necessary appendix.

The bond and correspondence between extrasubjective and subjective phenomena is such that extrasubjective phenomena, when following subjective, contribute to the animal's well-being, preservation and improvement. But exceptions to this happy correspondence arise from certain limits of animal nature. It often happens that extrasubjective phenomena following upon subjective are to some degree prejudicial and even fatal to the animal.

1936. The sensuous instinct never errs when its action is considered within its own sphere. It always observes its own law of providing feeling with the most pleasant adaptation and action possible to feeling, that is, actions which the feeling itself can have.(60) But it cannot prevent the action of the extrasubjective phenomena corresponding to its own action, whether such phenomena are useful or harmful. Such effects do not enter into its sphere of action.

Consequently, whenever feeling is excited by some pleasant or painful stimulus, the sensuous instinct, which is immediately moved (although always in keeping with the same law), determines movements which are sometimes useful, sometimes harmful to animality. When the movements are useful, we usually say that nature acts wisely; when harmful, we say nature errs. For example, an honest, moderate joy contributes to good health, increases the strength of the life instinct and seconds the energy of the functions, but excessive joy can cause apoplexy. This happened in my country some years ago when a very zealous citizen died in a fit of satisfaction because his side had won the vote for recasting the bells of St. Mark's.(61) The sensuous instinct caused the death of the good man. The joyful feeling experienced in his rational part was a stimulus to his feeling and to the instinct springing from it. This instinct brought about such vehement movements in the extrasubjective machine that circulation was quickened and caused a haemorrhage in the brain.(62)
The sensuous instinct does not seek this effect, which is foreign to it and the result of the substantial connection between extrasubjective motion and subjective feeling.

But isn't the human soul made for happiness and joy? Doesn't the degree of this enjoyment increase in proportion to the perfection of the soul's state? How can there be a degree of joy, a degree of perfection, which the animal body cannot support and which results in the destruction of the human being? Surely such a disorder is contrary to the concept of perfect human nature? Or do we have to say, when the degree and vividness of the soul's enjoyment is an obstacle for the body, either that the body is not proportionate to the natural functions of the soul, not a suitable instrument for it, or that there is a such a precipitous, vehement defect in the soul that its desire for immoderate enjoyment kills the composite of which it is the principal part? In both cases we see that human nature, in its present state, is defective although it could never have been created so by God whose works are perfect. In a word, we have here one of the many proofs of the original fall which not only deprived human beings of divine grace but inflicted on their nature the disorder we see everywhere.(63) But let us return to our argument.

1937. If a foreign particle enters the trachea, coughing immediately results. Nature's purpose is clear: it wishes to be rid of the foreign, harmful particle. But nature's purpose, as an action of creative wisdom, must be distinguished from the purpose of the sensuous instinct. By setting the muscles in motion, this instinct produces the loud, violent expiration called coughing. The wisdom of the Creator has certainly pre-established the harmony between the action of the sensuous instinct and the muscular movements used to expel particles invading the trachea and lungs. But the sensuous instinct does not have this aim (which is outside its action); it acts solely to free itself from sensible discomfort, to escape the unpleasant sensation and, as I said, to return to its pleasant state. The effect of expelling the foreign particle is a consequence of this and results solely from the organism's determining this effect.

1938. Coughing therefore takes place without the presence of a particle, or after a particle has been expelled, or when it cannot be expelled. In fact, granted any kind of irritation in the trachea, or contact between the trachea or lungs and a corrosive fluid, inflammation of the membrane itself, coughing can still take place without the presence of any foreign particle. In these cases coughing, far from removing the unpleasant sensation, only increases it and produces a greater concourse of fluids and blood to the irritated part. Sometimes coughing even increases inflammation to the point of rupturing the vessels and causing consumption. This could be called an error of nature, but the sensuous instinct has simply obeyed its immutable law according to which, as a result of a stimulus, it attempts to act in the way most suitable to it.

In the same way, if the trachea is touched by a particle which is then suddenly removed, coughing results despite the absence of the particle. The instinct that produces the coughing does not tend to the extrasubjective effect of rejecting the particle; the particle is expelled (if it can be expelled) simply as an effect of the instinct's action.

Certain distasteful odours, taste and tickling of the throat can produce vomiting.(64) Here also we must distinguish between the action of the sensuous instinct and the effect produced by vomiting. This effect is certainly pre-ordained by the wisdom of the Creator, and serves principally to free the stomach from indigestible, harmful things that aggravate it. The same wisdom gave the respective position and connection to the organs of smell and taste and to their nerves and relevant muscles, with the necessary result that every time the stomach is upset and the sensuous instinct is active, the muscles of the abdomen and diaphragm contract and force the encumbrance to re-ascend the oesophagus, up to the pharynx and the mouth. But the same nauseous odours, tastes and tickling of the throat also upset the stomach when it is empty and has no need to vomit, which does it harm. Here again, although nature seems to err, all these effects happen unbeknown, as it were, to the sensuous instinct which follows its own laws within the limits of its subjective or feeling sphere. The extrasubjective movements and phenomena are a consequence of the instinct's operation and outside its action.

1939. But in what precisely does this so-called error of nature consist? If a fluid irritates the lungs or bronchial tubes or trachea, giving rise to coughing, the error lies not in the supposition that a foreign particle is present, but in acting as though the particle could be expelled by the violence of expiration. In any irritation, inflammation or troublesome sensation, there is always an unsuitable particle acting out of place(65) in our feeling, some extrasubjective force present within the subjective force. But this foreign force acting on our feeling is only a portion of the total external body, of its total actuality. If this portion of force acting in our subjective feeling upsets our feeling, the result is pain and an effort to expel it. The sensuous instinct's effort is in reality directed not to expelling the foreign body (this would be too much for it), but to expelling the foreign force which has unsuitably entered the sphere of feeling.

In this sense we may say that the sensuous instinct reacts against an extrasubjective force. But the movements it produces, which are disposed by nature for freeing it, do not lie within its sphere; hence it cannot measure them or feel in anticipation the usefulness or harm they can cause the organisation.

1940. But if we now pass from large muscular movements occasioned by the sensuous instinct to small tonic movements, particularly those of the vessels, we will understand how the sensuous instinct sometimes provokes movements in a useful way and sometimes in a harmful way. The fact that nature tends to free itself from harm by suitable movements has been noted throughout history. Hippocrates said: 'Natures heal damage.'(66) Galen, using an expression which is perhaps too loose, adds: 'Nature does everything for the health of the human being,'(67) and again: 'Nature uses its strength to expel harmful things and preserve useful things.'(68) Stahl called this dominion of the animal principle for the benefit of animality (*) naturae [autocracy of nature], about which he wrote a dissertation which may still be read and meditated upon with great advantage.

1941. If this sublime opinion is to be reduced to its just limits, we must not forget the harm which the action of the sensuous principle, although of itself always tending towards good, and obedient to its own laws, draws indirectly in its wake. The things to be noted relative to this fact are innumerable and exceed our knowledge. Even the most famous doctors, with their otherwise very commendable researches, still seem to be a long way from coming to grips with its immense nature. I limit myself therefore to only a small part, and begin from a definite, factual point, already discussed, namely, that whenever irritation troubles some part of the body, the sensuous instinct comes into play, moving and, as it were, floundering and tossing about.

1942. In my opinion, irritation is always accompanied by feelings of varying vividness and distinction. However it is not always so easy to become conscious of these feelings because they are either tenuous or indistinct, or so excessive that they remove our mental attention. They are local, as I will explain later. Here it is sufficient to indicate that, in accord with the intention of creative nature, this locality was necessary for guiding the instinctive power of the animal in its effort to expel the irritation. On the other hand, irritation in one part can sometimes develop a more intense pain in another, and the instinct's greatest activity may perhaps be directed (wrongly) to this painful part. In this case, we must investigate whether this is a real error to which the sensuous instinct is subject or whether its action, although directed to the place of sympathetic pain, ends there or returns to the real seat of the initial irritation. The answer must be left to medical research.

1943. In the meantime, great importance should be given to the undeniable fact that generally speaking the sensuous instinct directs its aroused force to the irritated place, anxious to be rid of the irritating stimulus. But the form taken by this propulsive act depends entirely on the organisation, that is, on the organs which the instinct must set in motion in order to expel the stimulus and free itself from the unpleasant irritation. In fact, if it did not have organs, there would be no subjects of movement. It is clear that movement gets its quality and form from these organs. If the organ is continuous, movement will be continuous; if the organ is contiguous, movement will be irregular.

Motion communicated to a spherical body differs from that communicated to an elongated body. But that is not enough: the intestine movements manifested in an organ are modified principally by the composition of the organ. Finally, mechanical, physical and chemical forces, with some action independent of the animal's feeling, can offer resistance to the full effect of the instinct.
Difference in the movements of the nerves therefore depends on the size of the nerve bundles, on the varying delicacy of the filaments, on the presence of ganglia in the nerves, on whether they are joined in plexuses or unjoined, and whether the movements are communicated to many or few muscles, or to large muscles or very small muscle-fibres, etc.

For example, if the irritation is in the intestines, the action of the sensuous instinct produces peristaltic movement in order to free itself from the irritating faeces. For the same need, it also seeks help from the diaphragm, a large, strong muscle whose movements are necessary for surmounting the resistance of the sphincter. On the other hand, if the irritation is produced by cold on the skin, the sensuous instinct at once initiates movements directed to removing the stimulus. But because the skin and subcutaneous membrane have no large muscles that can be set in motion, these movements are many and minute; their seat is principally in the very small vessels whose tiny network pervades the skin and its adjoining parts in all directions. Here, the sensuous instinct clearly exercises its motor faculty by means of the ganglionic system, on which the cutaneous organ depends.

1944. The only proximate aim of all these actions of the sensuous instinct is to free the instinct from every irritation present to feeling. There is, however, another effect outside feeling and instinct, but tied to the actions of the sensuous instinct by creative wisdom. This effect, unfelt by the instinct, is movement considered in its extrasubjective conditions. Precisely because it is unfelt, it does not form part of the instinct's tendencies. In the creative mind, however, the end of the movement, although not always attained, is beneficent because it repels foreign bodies which damage the organisation. Obstacles to this effect are the various causes coming into play independently of the laws of the sensuous instinct, which are always faithfully observed. This gives rise to what is called 'error on the part of nature as healer'.

Beneficent, creative wisdom, in joining these extrasubjective movements to the activity of the sensuous instinct, intends to give the animal body a means of expelling harmful agents. Consequently, even the least movements, as well as muscular movements which produce coughing, vomiting, etc., tend, by favouring excretions, to expel the cause of irritation.
Nature's wisdom in making the vessels from a substance which is both strong and extremely elastic is truly admirable; the varying flow of the fluids depends in the first instance upon this extraordinary elasticity.

According to the laws of hydrodynamics, the flow must be quicker where the canal narrows, and slower where it widens, so that the same quantity of fluid passes through every section. The same laws clearly indicate that whenever a vessel can to some degree be narrowed or widened in its different parts, the flow at any given time can also be determined. The sensuous instinct certainly has this control over the vessels, as we can see from the concentration of fluids around a wound, and from the effect of passions, which accelerate or retard the flow of blood, limiting it to the region of the heart or widening it so that the surface capillary vessels swell. It is precisely this power of the sensuous instinct that makes it the cause of all excretions and secretions, whether the body is healthy or sick.

1945. The point becomes all-important if we consider that every curable disease is remedied, I believe, by suitable excretions. I do not mean that excretions are the first cause of a cure, which may well be found in solids, just as the irritation caused by solids may first prompt disease. Nevertheless, I do not think it is totally true to say, as many do today, that suitable excretions are simply the effect of a cure. Good health is certainly not restored as long as these healthy excretions are incomplete. Obviously, if the cure itself does not exist, its effects are impossible, unless we wish to maintain that effects precede cause. Even our highly intelligent authors of modern medical doctrine, for whom solids seem to be recognised as the first cause of disease, do not deny that whenever irritated solids receive analogous movements (which, in my view, do not depend on the sensuous instinct), fluids alter their course, modify their crasis and themselves become irritants, very often causing phlogistic diastase.

According to Tommasini:

1946. In fact, modern doctors, who have reduced the majority of diseases to inflammation, frequently make use of blood- letting. In doing this they use what I call artificial excretion as a cure.(70) They are not of course applying a remedy directly to solids, but they decrease fluid which they consider as an irritant, as the principal if not the first cause, and as the cause of diathesis, if not its original excitation.

1947. In general, therefore, we can say: 1. the sensuous instinct excited by a local irritation produces an extrasubjective vascular movement whose beneficent effect consists in removing by means of excretions the cause of the irritation, and 2. diseases therefore are generally cured by excretions.

1948. It is extraordinary to see how a system, established by the effort of great men, is taken to extremes by multitudes of lesser men who, through fear of appearing dated, ban even the most innocent words used by previous masters. Today, for instance, many have rejected with pathetic disdain the terms 'emunctories' and 'strainers' in relationship to the human body. These words are useless, they maintain, because they are employed by the upholders-of-fluid theory who, although they frequently use the words, have not in fact invented them. But despite the criticism, nature continues to have its emunctories and strainers and will never be without them, as long as the human body has skin, kidneys, intestines, nostrils, lungs and, in a word, all the excretory organs corresponding to the secretory. Every part of the human body has both kinds of organs. Nature preserves its healthy state with emunctories and strainers, and I have no hesitation in naming them as such. The animal is 'an excited fundamental feeling'; by means of continuous excitation, this feeling produces numerous movements, displacements and urges in parts of the organated machine.

As a result many of these parts, when reduced to a more or less perfectly fluid state, must separate from it. They cease to live with its life, acquire a foreign, irritative state and have to be expelled to prevent their doing harm. But the body, if it continued to lose parts without acquiring others, would be reduced to nothing, and first to a state unsuitable for animal life. This explains its need to build itself up, either from molecules taken from atmospheric fluid or from those extracted from food. It works upon these molecules, according to its need, by composing, dividing, assimilating and organising them.

1949. If the body is healthy, and the life instinct has not experienced irritations capable of weakening or dominating it, the sensuous instinct, cause of the fundamental excitation, generates normal movements in the machine. Secretions and excretions are then carried out in these movements in the normal way.

1950. This is not the case when the irritation is harmful; here, disease processes take place. The difficulty lies in discerning when and why the irritation is so harmful that it determines the sensuous instinct to initiate the sequence of movements called 'diseased process'. In my opinion, irritation of the sensuous instinct, is ultimately, a painful feeling, and feeling is the action of the life instinct. I must therefore investigate the laws of this instinct, and its universal, constant facts.

1951. The life instinct animates the body. For me, animating the body and making it felt is the same thing.
The feeling produced by the life instinct is perfect or imperfect. It is perfect when the life instinct does not need to struggle strenuously with foreign forces; imperfect, when it has to do the opposite.

1952. I say struggle strenuously because we must distinguish two kinds of struggle: one requiring no unpleasant effort, so that it can hardly be called struggle; another requiring unpleasant or painful effort.
When the machine is perfectly organated, the animating principle experiences no disturbance from its animating action. On the contrary, it enjoys the action; no ens toils to be. If we wish to apply the word 'struggle' to what happens in the effectuation of life, it must simply mean the dominion exercised by the vital principle over the substance it makes its own by transforming it into the term of its feeling. This (corporeal) substance is dominated and modified; the soul enjoys its dominion, which is the pleasure of life. Note that this perfection called life requires, in addition to perfect organisation of the body, external, suitable stimuli such as air, light, etc. However, a perfectly organised body, harmonising with all the external stimuli that act upon it and incapable of obstructing life, can probably never be found in the present state of the human race, although we may mentally conceive such a body.

1953. This kind of body could be conceived as existing for an instant, but not as enduring unless we suppose that 1. no foreign power alters its organisation, and 2. suitable stimuli are continuously provided to enable its animal functions to operate perfectly.
Continuity of parts, required for the unity of the felt element, comes from outside. Furthermore, perpetual, intestine motion is necessary, if life is to reveal itself through extrasubjective effects. This motion is also determined by the organisation imparted by the foreign cause. Again, the animal cannot be individuated unless the harmony of these movements is controlled by a centre of feeling. This centrality of feeling itself, and therefore of movement, once more depends in great part on the organisation. But granted the external data, the extrasubjective movements depend on the subjective activity. What then is the law of this activity and the cause of its operation?

Feeling tends to diffuse, excite and individualise itself, but certainly could not achieve this without all its conditions. Nevertheless, it is given and posited in nature by the Creator. Granted therefore an extended, excited and individualised feeling, its activity ceaselessly unfolds by preserving and increasing these three prerogatives: 1. it continuously preserves the felt element in all its extension, extending it even further; 2. it preserves the excitation, increasing it in proportion to the stimulus, and 3. it preserves the harmony and unity in proportion to the harmony and unity of the stimuli.

1954. What is the role of the life and sensuous instincts in all this? The life instinct produces the fundamental feeling on finding the body appropriately organised, and makes the parts of the body felt. These parts must be molecules organised with an aptitude for receiving life proper to the animal. If a foreign force tends to remove or separate the felt parts, the life instinct applies force to the parts in order to retain them. If other suitable organated molecules come in contact and continuity with the felt molecules, the life instinct strives to invade them and bring them into the fundamental feeling. These and similar actions are different acts and moments of the organising function. On the other hand, the life instinct suffers and feels pain if, after being stimulated to these functions by contact with matter, it encounters opposition to their execution and is prevented from completing them. Any opposition and struggle in the fundamental feeling, any opposition to its natural propensity, means pain and suffering.

1955. Here I must distinguish between pain and cessation of (individual) feeling. If some parts of the animated continuum are withdrawn from the action of the life instinct, that is, divided from it and become unorganised, the feeling whose term they were ceases in them and with it all pain. Thus in parts which leave the human body by means of the excretory organs (gangrene is a case in point), all painful feeling ceases. Pain therefore is the struggle between the life instinct and matter, that is, a foreign force; but when matter has withdrawn itself from the forces of the life instinct and totally conquered the instinct, all struggle and pain cease. However, when the life instinct finds matter so disposed that it posits no resistance to the action of the instinct, or when the instinct obtains complete victory over the matter by making it totally the term of its action, feeling (whose nature is pleasure) is then posited.

1956. But once feeling (essential pleasure) has begun, two kinds of movements can take place in the matter which constitutes its term. Some movements neither discontinue nor make an effort to discontinue the living matter or withdraw it from the action of the life instinct. Indeed, rather than destroy feeling, they excite and increase it and, because this feeling is essentially pleasure, increase the pleasure. All sense-experiences arising naturally in the animal body are of this kind.
Other movements apply force to the matter, making it discontinuous and unorganised. In this case, during the time that the matter remains continuous and organised, a struggle takes place which we call pain.(71)

1957. Granted pain and pleasant sense-experience, the sensuous instinct immediately comes into action to escape the former and second the latter. This action draws in its wake other movements of animate matter which are either useful or harmful to the constitution of the animal; they either conform to or oppose its fundamental excitation. In such movements, resulting from the action of the sensuous instinct, we must distinguish:

1. the quantity of impulse received by the sensuous instinct, and therefore the quantity of its radical action. This does not exceed the level imposed by the quantity of the sense-experience or the pain which causes it. The sense-experience and the pain can vary:

2. the quantity of continuation of the action of the sensuous instinct - the sensuous instinct, after receiving the impulse from the pleasant sense-experience or the pain, acts only on condition and in so far as it finds its action pleasant or less unpleasant. Whenever its action is more unpleasant than not, it either ceases from all action or diminishes it in proportion to the degree of discomfort the action entails. This explains to some extent the activity of animal nature in certain diseased conditions.

3. the advantage or harm to animality resulting from the action of the sensuous instinct - movements caused in the organism by this action cause modifications in both the life and sensuous instincts of the animal. Relative to the life instinct, movements caused by the sensuous instinct in the organism or living composition can

1958. In the case of the sensuous instinct, the same movements, whether causing pleasant or painful senseexperiences, generate new stimuli and impulses for the activity of the instinct, which thus multiplies and reproduces its actions.

1959. Granted therefore a first sense-experience or pain, there must follow a series of movements, varying in length, which alternate with pleasant and painful feelings. This series or sequence of subjective feelings and extrasubjective movements can be useful or harmful to the animal's state.

1960. One example of a series useful to the animal's state is that in which it develops from a seed to perfect maturity. This development is a perpetual sequence of

This cycle of movements and sense-experiences, of sense- experiences and movements, is perpetuated throughout the whole life of the animal; the actions of the life and sensuous instincts are perpetually alternated. The life instinct, by generating a sense-experience, gives an impulse to the sensuous instinct. This in turn, by generating movement, provides matter for the action of the life instinct. The continuous succession begins when the external stimuli produce the first movements and supply the matter for the first sense-experiences of the life instinct. But external stimuli presuppose the prior formation of the animal, at least in its primal rudiments; they presuppose the life instinct in act in the first felt-element, in the first feeling of which the instinct is the activity.

1961. Another example of a useful series is found in disease processes themselves, when they restore a sick animal to health. Every disease process begins with an external stimulus which modifies the life instinct, drawing it into conflict with brute matter. The matter now tends to withdraw from the influence of the life instinct, thus causing a painful and suffering state. These painful feelings then bring the sensuous instinct into action, making it produce other movements. These supply the matter for the life instinct, which in turn produces the second sense- experiences. These experiences once again impel the sensuous instinct, provoking it to cause new movements. Thus unrolls the perpetual, varyingly prolonged cycle of sense-experiences and movements called disease process.

1962. An example of a series and sequence of movements and sense-experiences harmful to the animal can be seen in the ageing process which the animal insensibly undergoes up to its destruction. This same law of alternation, which has developed the animal from seed to full maturity, gradually leads it from maturity to dissolution.

Similarly, we see a fateful cycle of movements and senseexperiences in those disease processes which culminate in death.

Notes

(58) AMS, 401-415

(59) Cf. Stahl, De naturae erroribus medicis, sect. 5. Nicholls, in his De anima medica praelectio, which I have already quoted, attributes illness to the weak, inert, inept, frightened and discouraged soul, without explaining how the soul, which can sometimes be so strong, astute, prompt and courageous, now possesses the contrary qualities.

(60) Feeling is formed and posited by the activity I have called 'life instinct', an activity which is limited and conditioned by the composition and organisation of the body. This very strong feeling varies in degree and in perfection. Excited by stimuli, it has the power to second the excitation in various ways and directions, choosing always the most comforting and pleasant direction.

(61) In England the apoplexy which caused the death of Roger Hill, son of Roger Hill, is well known. It resulted from the sudden joy that seized him at the news of the death of his avaricious father who, for the sake of accumulating immense wealth, had kept his numerous family in the most straitened circumstances.

(62) The wisdom of the Creator by providing the blood vessels with a wonderful elasticity has ensured that they will not burst under the flow of fluids. This is particularly the case with the arteries, which dilate and contract according the flow of the fluids and their impetus. Moreover, the vessels are strengthened and held in place by the parts adhering to them. Nicholls says: 'The power of these surrounding parts in safeguarding the vessels is clearly demonstrated by two experiments. The first concerns the ciliated vessels of the spleen. In the newly-born, by means of the umbilical cord, these vessels easily fill without rupturing. However, they are nearly always ruptured when the abdomen has been opened and the waxen matter of the openings has passed into the vein, that is, once the pressure associated with the closed walls of the abdomen has been removed. The second experiment concerns the filling of the mother's vessels with the waxen matter. In the newly-born, whose soft skull easily gives way, these vessels split open in many places when filled with the wax. But this happens more rarely in the bodies of people of more advanced age whose skulls have hardened' (De anima medica praelectio).

(63) Outstanding theologians always maintained that the effects of original sin are 1. the loss of divine grace and 2. the disorder which wounded and damaged human nature. The celebrated Willem Est, one of the most fervent defenders of the Church against the innovators of the north, writes that Adam, after the sin, 'WAS DEPRIVED OF GOD'S IMMENSE BENEFITS AND WOUNDED IN HIS NATURE AND IN THE POWERS OF HIS SOUL.' Cf. Homil. adversus Lutherum et caeteros haereticos de Septem Sacramentis, Hom. 1, where he describes the damage to nature and the remedies applied by the mystical Samaritan, Jesus Christ.

(64) In his valuable work on nerve function, Professor Valentin teaches that the olfactory nerve does not have a double root, one of which moves and the other feels, but a single root that feels. Nevertheless, odours can give to the muscles a motion which produces vomiting, convulsions, etc. This is a fresh proof of the simplicity of the animal principle. It is necessary for the same principle to receive sensation from one organ and communicate movement to another in a different place. This same identical principle is thus shown to be present with its activity in several places, that is, where it receives sensation and where it produces movement. We also see that it is immune from the laws of space (relative to it the differences of space are nothing), and that its subjective action outside space produces phenomena clothed with extrasubjective space.

(65) Whenever the throat is stimulated by a finger or a feather so that vomiting results, the displacement of the molecules of the affected part continues for a little time sufficient to bring about vomiting, even though the stimulus has ceased to tickle.

(66) Epidem., 6.

(67) De Nat. facult., vol. 1, 1.

(68) Ibid.

(69) Dellinfiammazione e della febbre continua, etc., c. 19.

(70) This principle produced the purgative medicine of Le Roy. His purpose was always to expel irritative fluids from the human body, despite the name 'solidism'.

(71) Provided the movements impressed on living matter do not tend to discontinue and disorganise it, but only give it a movement of excitation in opposition to natural excitation, the effect is upsets, disharmony, disagreeable feelings, etc.