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Elements of Physiophilosophy

Chapter 27: ERRATA AND CORRIGENDA.
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About This Book

An ambitious synthesis of natural science and speculative philosophy, the work arranges physical and biological phenomena under a unified conceptual system derived from idealist principles. It traverses mineral chemistry (offering systematic treatments of salts and their combinations), anatomy and morphology (advancing homology and organ-correspondence across taxa), and broader physiological and cosmological reflections, interweaving empirical descriptions with metaphysical generalizations. Emphasizing patterns of succession, analogy, and form, it argues for a method that links observation and theory, proposing classificatory schemes and biological interpretations intended to stimulate further inquiry rather than settle technical disputes.

IV. PSYCHOLOGY.

FUNCTIONS OF THE ANIMALS.

3583. The present section treats concerning the functions of the Whole animal, just as the preceding one did of those belonging to individual organs. It is at bottom the psychological part of Physio-philosophy. The functions are so numerous and difficult also to arrange, that I place this section here, to point out rather its situation than to follow out or trace its development.

3584. All the functions of an entire animal are spiritual or sensorial functions; at least they are conditionated by the senses, and I will also speak of them only in this respect. The mechanical and chemical functions have been already comprehended in the physiological part. The senses only make their appearance gradually in animals, and with them also the spiritual functions.

A. FUNCTIONS OF THE DERMATOZOA.

1. Enterozoa or Oozoa.

3585. These animals are governed chiefly by a passive sense of feeling, from their consisting for the most part of a naked, homogeneous, and gelatinous integument, and living in water, an element wherein the other senses can be but slightly active.

3586. Their sense of feeling stands upon the lowest grade, since it is only the sensibility of the tegument, there being no articulated organs of touch, so that it consists only in the discrimination of an opposing object.

The ability or power to discriminate is not yet consciousness; for unto this a reflexion upon the object discriminated is necessary.

The Infusoria, Polypi, and Acalephæ, simply feel that something else is there, but they are so completely imprisoned in this feeling that they are unable to submit the same to an internal process of comparison.

3587. By reason of this inability to compare their own feelings, not a trace is left unto them of internal change; so that these creatures are truly devoid of memory or recollection.

The Infusoria have only sensation, nothing else; they are therefore in ceaseless motion. They are actually capable of nothing but moving and eating. Of all other spiritual functions they are utterly devoid.

3588. Their spiritual life is in some degree a mesmeric condition. Destitute of the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting, they feel every thing, or, properly speaking, perform all these functions at one and the same time, and by one organ, the visceral mass. By mesmerism they find their food, perceive the light, and become transparent unto themselves, just as they are really in a physical point of view. For they are only viscera or visceral nerves.

Development of the Mind.

3589. The mind, just as the body, must be developed out of these animals. The human body has been formed by an extreme separation of the neuro-protoplasmic or mucous mass. So must the human mind be a separation, a memberment of infusorial sensation.

3590. The highest mind is an anatomized or dismembered mesmerism, each member whereof has been constituted independent in itself.

The skeleton of this dissected mind, when scientifically represented, would be the science of the mind, i. e. Philosophy, properly so called.

Pneumato-philosophy is the likeness of Physio-philosophy. For spirit is only the tension of nature, and nature only the spirit set in motion.

The philosophy of spirit must develop itself out of the philosophy of nature, as doth the flower out of the stem. For nature is the spirit analyzed and at rest, which we can handle at our pleasure. It does not appear only for an instant; but as stone, air and such like entities, abideth always, as if to solicit and preserve us for its investigation.

A Philosophy or Ethicks apart from Physio-philosophy is a nonentity, a bare contradiction, just as a flower without a stem is a non-existent thing.

3591. As many essential members as Physio-philosophy hath, into so many must Pneumato-philosophy also divide, and this too so exactly that the two shall cover each other.

The reason why one has hitherto rambled about in Pneumato-philosophy without ballast and without compass, depends solely upon the disregard which has been paid to the science or knowledge of Nature. It is in fact not difficult to understand how impossible it must be, from observations made upon the rapidly evanescent phenomena of the spirit, to thence abstract a system of the laws in conformity wherewith this spirit manifests itself or acts. Spirit is nothing different from Nature, but simply her purest outbirth or offspring, and therefore her symbol, her language. With such a basis as this, we shall no longer pursue the ignes fatui of the mind, but first of all endeavour to banish them into the provinces or realms of Nature, and there co-ordinate them in conformity with her laws; then for the first time shall we recognize the flaming lights of the mind and the divine voices, which all matter proclaimeth through the speech of Man.

He, who were once in a condition to reveal or disclose this conformity of Nature's phenomena with those of Spirit, will have learnt the philosophy of the latter.

2. Functions of the Vascular or Sexual Animals.

3592. These animals are no longer merely sentient, 'clairvoyant' Acalephæ, because, in addition to the nervous mass, they are provided with other systems, such as the sexual and vascular, with the special organs of digestion and taste.

These three or four organs must also resolve themselves into three spiritual functions; the vascular system furnishes special organs of feeling and therewith a voluntary sense of feeling; the intestine and chiefly the liver is now the cardinal organ, and will therefore execute the mesmerically percipient functions.

3593. In the liver the faculty of anticipation and foresight, with melancholy, choleric passion, and anger, appear to reside. Encephalic thought is reflected in it.

The liver is the soul in a state of sleep, the brain is the soul active and awakening. In it the spirit broods unconsciously for years, and then breaks forth fearfully, as capriciousness, tyranny and sorrow, but also as earnestness and strength.

Circumspection and foresight appear to be the thoughts of the Bivalve Mollusca and Snails.

Gazing upon a Snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess sitting upon the tripod. What majesty is in a creeping Snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a Snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself.

The old artists must have felt this signification, as in many of their representations they have introduced a Snail. One can hardly think, that in so doing they wished to express such common and lascivious ideas, as are at present manifested openly or secretly by our daily enjoyments.

3594. The intestine must moreover be concerned with the sense of taste. Taste, however, leads to voracity, gluttony, daintiness, sluggishness and drowsiness.

3595. Taste in union with the sexual function is the expression of venery or lust.

This is indicated by the secretion of slime, by the monstrous size too of the sexual organs, and by their androgynism, which enables either individual during copulation to enjoy the delicious feeling, belonging to the male and female, either at once or alternately. Their food also appears to be selected from a feeling of desire.

Circumspection in feeling, dainty voracity, and immoderate lust appear to constitute the spiritual character of the Malacozoa, especially of the Snails.

3. Functions of the Respiratory or Arthric Animals.

3596. The Insect is mainly an aerial and motor organ, and therefore its spirit is also of an aerial and motor kind.

The respiratory process produces strength, and this again courage, both which are the distinguishing properties of Insects. The Insect is the strongest and boldest animal upon the earth.

Health, plenitude of life, generosity, nobleness, and heroism dwell in the thorax.

3597. But besides these virtues the spirit of the thorax is also that of smell. Insects have an excellent sense of smell, the spirit of which is cunningness and treachery, wherein no animal will easily surpass them.

3598. The Insect has moreover a spirit of motion or versatility of the tactile sense, which is displayed in the representation of symmetrical figures. This faculty proceeds especially from the creative sexual functions—as mechanical or artistic instinct.

All spirit of motion launches out into mechanical instinct. It disappears in all classes of animals, which chiefly correspond to the sex and belly, as, e. g. in Fishes and Reptiles. On the other hand, in the moveable thoracic animals or Birds, the mechanical instincts at once re-appear.

Mechanical instinct and dexterity of limbs run parallel together.

The dexterity of the limbs taken up into the spirit is an art-sense.

B. FUNCTIONS OF THE CEPHALOZOA.

3599. Here the head is for the first time placed in a perfect condition, and hence an antagonism arises for the first time between head and trunk.

The Cephalozoon no longer distinguishes nature and self only like the acephalous and amnemonic animals; but it distinguishes even its body from its head, because the Fish has begun to be a double animal.

3600. The Cephalozoon hath consciousness; consciousness of its condition, of its body, but not of its head and the operations therein. It has no self-consciousness.

3601. As soon as an animal contemplates a part of its body, of its world, and hath consciousness in a general sense, it has also memory. For memory is a repetition of its own condition, not the reiterated feeling of a foreign object.

The Acephalous or anencephalic animals have therefore no memory, because they live only in opposition to the world, but never in antagonism to themselves. Every perception is therefore a new one for them, because it is always an actual object which excites them. Whether Insects have memory, has not yet been made out.

3602. The brainless animals have no ideas, and naturally so, because they have no consciousness.

It would appear likewise that they do not feel pain.

The Cephalozoa have ideas, and quite certainly pains, because they become partly an object unto themselves.

4. Functions of the Osteo-or Glossozoa.

3603. The Fish's head is the lowest, and therefore its mind also will manifest only the first function, that ranks above the mind of the Acephalozoa, the memory.

With this memory, however, all the spiritual functions, exhibited by the preceding classes, but chiefly mesmerism, have been bestowed.

3604. Fishes are again provident, zealous animals, that, drawn together by mysterious bands, make the longest voyages, wherein they ascend and descend rivers, knowing how to find their prey over miles in extent.

All the mechanical instincts are, on the contrary, obliterated in them, as being fingerless, finned animals. Their principal business is propagation—Pelvic animals.

3605. Gluttony is the principal character of the Glossozoa, in so far as taste stands upon the lowest stage. Touch and taste are only motion and deglutition.

Smell becomes evidently stronger.

The ear still ranks upon the lowest stage, but yet they hear closely. In other respects they are mute, and exhibit all the consequences of aphony.

3606. Fishes are of the Phlegmatic temperament.

5. Functions of the Myo-or Rhinozoa.

3607. Reptiles are Cephalozoa with well-developed lungs and nose, and are therefore gifted with voice.

3608. To memory comes the art of ambuscade or lying in wait, a property of the olfactory sense, the application of memory. The circumspection of the Snails passes over into ambuscade and surprise.

With this character the higher perfection of the belly or of the digestive system, along with the poisoning saliva, is in parallel accordance. To take by surprise and to poison are acts of one series.

3609. Reptiles appear enabled to reflect, i. e. several reminiscences are at their bidding. Now, the comparison of these constitutes reflection. They are therefore more sagacious than Fishes, docile and in some measure susceptible of instruction.

3610. The courage, which they have probably obtained through their aerial respiration, passes over more into impudence and sauciness.

3611. Reptiles are of the Melancholic crasis.

6. Functions of the Neuro-or Otozoa.

3612. The spirit of the thorax and limbs is here predominant, whence comes the restlessness and mechanical instinct of the Bird.

The motor sense, the ear, is the prominent one. The ear, however, is partly the sense for the Indefinite, partly for the demolition of matter. The auditory spirit is fear.

But it passes over into joy, passion, levity, if it perfectly perceives tones.

3613. With the ear and the moveable organs of voice originates a kind of language, which is in a condition to express a multitude of sentiments. The language of Birds hath not a few tones, and expresses not a few passions.

3614. The Bird knits or associates for the first time with some completeness a sense, or definite sensation, to a simple tone. The Bird hath for the first time signs, or symbols, which are not the things themselves, but only signify or mean them.

The Bird understands the relation of the spiritual expression to the organ or matter. It comprehends a connexion where none is materially, but which is only imparted by the idea.

The capacity to understand the thing in the image or idea, I call imagination, and of this Birds furnish us with very definite proofs.

Birds can therefore dream.

3615. Reptiles and Fishes appear to have no ideas because they have no signs, or tones, indicating the resolution of the organ into mind. For the tone is none other than the ghost of the organ or animal. Fishes and Reptiles do not indeed dream.

3616. The Bird, however, appears to get no further than to mere images or ideas. The conception is wanting unto them.

It has therefore no sense of shame. But possesses in a full degree circumspection, desire of imitation, comparison.

3617. To the Bird it is not simply the sensation of its body that becomes, like a foreign product, objective; but its own product, its voice, as something already distinct from its own mind.

3618. It is clear, that if all the sensorial functions were to become objective to the Bird, it would be self-apparent and resolve itself into self-consciousness. Thus does self-consciousness sprout forth gradually with the sensorial functions.

3619. Birds are of the Sanguineous temperament.

7. Functions of the Æsthesio-or Ophthalmozoa.

3620. All the faculties hitherto mentioned occur here. The soul of the eye is still associated with them, and therewith the faculties of perception, understanding and conception appear to be bestowed.

One cannot refuse understanding to the Thricozoa. The actions of the Dog, Horse and Elephant, do not admit otherwise of being conceived; nor also the shame and pride, fidelity, animosity, desire of revenge, and yet many other properties exhibited by these animals.

But it is an understanding without self-consciousness, if we may so venture to express ourselves; an understanding of many signs, but devoid of any combination and separation of these signs; in a word, there is no faculty of judgment.

The Thricozoa are Choleric animals.

8. Functions of the Panæsthetic Animal.

3621. If finally all its organs become objective to the animal, through contemplation of the universe, through hearkening of the animal restored into symbols; it thus contemplates itself, is apparent unto itself, and is quite conscious of itself.

Then is the animal equivalent to the whole animal kingdom and to the universe.

3622. The universal spirit is Man.

In the human race the world has become individual. Man is the entire image or likeness of the world. His language is the spirit of the world. All the functions of animals have attained unto unity, unto self-consciousness, in Man.

3623. The thorough penetration of all the animal's symbols, the comparison of all the world's symbols, and thus free comparison is Reason.

The understanding compares only the symbols of sounds, of men; but the reason compares also the symbols of light, of the world.

Reason is world-understanding; the understanding is animal reason.

All the mental functions of animals have become ratiocinative in Man.

Feeling is in him consciousness, consciousness is self-consciousness, the understanding is reason, the passion, freedom, the mechanical instinct artistic sense, the comparison science.

3624. The spirits of the senses are Art-spirits, the spirit of reason is the spirit of Science.

Art.

3625. Art is the representation of the senses in Nature.

3626. The sense is, however, the last or ultimate design of Nature.

Art is consequently the representation of Nature's design. (Ed. 1st, 1811. § 3517.)

3627. That is beautiful which represents the will of Nature.

But non-beautiful is that which represents real Nature by means of art.

3628. Art is one universal business. Beautiful is that, which represents the world within a fragment or portion of the world.

3629. There is also one natural beauty—unconscious formation of the world's laws.

3630. The highest natural beauty is the universal portion of nature, i. e. Man.

Man expresses the ultimate goal or purpose of Nature's design.

3631. The terminus or goal of Nature is, in Man to revert again into herself. The human countenance most perfectly repeats the trunk, and again reverts wholly and actually into the trunk. That human countenance is beautiful, in which the vertebral column runs back again parallel with the vertebral column of the trunk. The facial vertebral column is the nose.

3632. The face is beautiful, whose nose runs parallel to the spine.

No human face has grown unto this estate, but every nose makes an acute angle with the spine. The facial angle is, as is well known, 80°.

What as yet no Man has remarked, and what is not to be remarked either without our view of the cranial signification, the old artists have felt through inspiration. They have not only made the facial angle a right angle, but have even stepped beyond this, the Romans going up to 96°, the Greeks even to 100°.

Whence comes it, that this unnatural face of the Grecian works of art, is still more beautiful than that of the Roman, when the latter comes nearer unto Nature? The reason thereof resides in the fact of the Grecian's artistic face representing Nature's design more than that of the Roman; for in the former the nose is placed quite perpendicular, or parallel to the spinal cord, and thus returns whither it has been derived.

3633. He who paints or otherwise copies Nature in a purely mechanical manner, is consequently a bungler; he is devoid of ideas, and imitates her no better than a bird does song, or an ape the postures of the human body. The province of Art is alas! not yet understood.

3634. In Man all the beauties of nature are associated or combined.

3635. Thus, Nature can be beautiful, in so far as she represents the individual ideas of Man.

3636. There are only two art-senses, the eye and the ear; and thus but two departments of art, the Plastic and Sonant, or that of form and of motion.

3637. The province of form represents the material universe in its ideas, its design, and thus in its freedom.

3638. The representation of the bodily universe in the ideas is the Architectural art. (Ed. 1st 1811, § 3533.)

3639. The representation of heaven in the Plastic, is the church architecture.

The temple or church is the art of heaven.

3640. The representation of the planet in the Plastic is the house.

The house is the art of the planet.

The architectural art is the cosmical art.

3641. The representation of the Individual is the Sculptor's art.

The sculptural art represents the Terrestrial, and in its highest estate Man. It is the Heroic art.

3642. This art rendered manifest in matter, or repeated in light, is Painting.

Painting represents the symbol, the naught of the world, the heavenly, and also in its lowest estate a Spiritual.

Painting is the art of religion, the Sacred art.

Painting is the art of heathens, whose deities are men; Painting is the art of Christians, whose Men, being sacred or holy, are gods.

God can be painted, but not formed or sculptured.

3643. The art of motion represents the material and the spiritual motion.

3644. The representation of the world's material laws of motion is the Dance.

3645.The representation of the motion of individuals is the Histrionic art.

3646. The representation of the world's spiritual laws of motion, of the laws of the dance, is Music.

3647. The spiritual representation of the Histrionic is the Poetic art.

Science.

3648. The representation of the rational world is Science.

3649. The first science is the Science of Language, the architecture of science, the earth.

3650. The second science is the Art of Rhetoric, the sculpture of science, the river.

3651. The third science is Philosophy, the painting of science, the respiration or breath.

This, like painting, divides into a number of branches, whereof the art of government is the highest.

3652. The fourth science is the Art of War, the art of motion, histrionism, music, poetic art of science, the light.

As in the art of poetry all arts have been blended, so in the art of war have all sciences and all arts.

The art of War is the highest, most exalted art; the art of freedom and of right, of the blessed condition of Man and of humanity—the Principle of Peace.

THE END.

ERRATA AND CORRIGENDA.

Page 4,§ 30, read upon the primary proposition of mathematics or the axiom.
5,§ 35, for magnitudes read quantities.
8,§ 39, for Manifold read Different.
11,§ 49, l. 10, for elevating themselves in power, read becoming suppressed. § 50, l. 4, dele the second —.
12,l. 1, for magnitudes read quantities; l. 5, forread 0. § 52, for emerged read been evolved out of nothing, or been produced from it by addition; but it is, &c. § 54, for removing read suppressing.
14,§ 59, l. 8, for posits itself read itself posits.
16,for presentation read passim, representation.
32,§ 134, for Disintegrated read Dissevered.
32,§ 137, for never read nowhere.
37,§ 161, l. 7, for it read there.
38,§ 164, for inventive read passim throughout Part I. postulate.
39,l. 1, for and the axiom is read the axiom being.
44,§ 195, l. 15, for that it may shine read upon which it shines.
50,§ 214, last line, for darker read dark.
59,§ 253, read heavy and material.
61,§ 269, 1 and 2, for caloric read hydrogen, and for hydrogen read carbon.
80,§ 388, for nitrogen read hydrogen.
112,l. 6, for Terpentin read Serpentin; l. 7 from bottom, for Calces read Calcareous earths.
124,§ 562, for the recent read new.
139,>§ 633-4, for disintegrations read dispersions.
159,§ 761, for metallic read magnetic.
186,§ 914, for heat of blood read blood-heat.
209,§ 1060, read constantly circulate therein.
213,§ 1077, l. 6, for but before read and whereas; l. 7, for have read previously, and dele it has then, and read the appearance is now.
228,§ 1161, read has been reproduced after trunk, and dele being.
249,§ 1314, for umbilicus read hilum, and for cause read basis.
307,§ 1679, instead of stipaceous read hypogynous.
308,§ 1687, l. 2, read Stielblumen or Hypogynes.
320,§ 1763, after light-æther read from the dead mass, &c.
327,§ 1800, for substance, &c., read contents become, &c.
328-9,for Myxozoa read Protozoa, and for Acalephæ read Acalephæ here and passim.
330l. 2, after the word radiating read æther.
332,§ 1824, for substance read contents, and § 1827, for substance read mass.
334,§ 1837, read upon the middle rate of oxydation.
327,l. 5, transpose the words matter and spirit.
345,§ 1928, read elemental matter.
346,§ 1931, read at certain points, after each other.
354,§ 1992, read through the medium of the gills, the water through that of the intestine, &c.
355,§ 2006, for along with read which belong to the category of.
361,§ 2039, read plexus-forming ramules; § 2046, for is imparted read furnishes us, and for by read with.
362,§ 2050, for œsophageal read pharyngeal, passim, as also, pharynx for pharynx.
372,§ 2114, for enter into the composition of read appertain to; and for Mammalia read Thricozoa.
376,§ 2141, read the bone, the fluid which has been secreted from it and rigidified.
381,§ 2176, for the last word bladder read cyst, hic et passim.
386,§ 2211, read bivalve Mollusca, passim throughout Zoogeny.
393,l. 1, read exsecernent.
398,§ 2313, read Snail-type of organization.
405,§ 2371, read, or the integument after respiratory organ.
408,§ 2387, for carnivorous read false molars; for incisor read laniary molar; for premolar read second, and for tuberculous read third true molar.
493,§ 3054, for testaceous Mollusca read Conchozoa or Shell-animals.
515,§ 3170, for stock read trunk.
544,§ 3301, after analogy read which at best is but a word of random definition.
532,§ 3256, read pharyngeal or pneumogastric nerves, to end of paragraph. For the words evolution and evolved, read passim in the Botanical and Zoological parts, perfection and perfected, as the text may require.