Internode

“ The organs, therefore, of bodily taste may be regarded as the basis of the organs of taste in the higher degrees of mind, and in this character may be serviceable and beneficial to those higher degrees—in like manner as every other basis is a necessary support to the superstructure of which it is the basis. For I need not inform you, that the all of the material world which we inhabit, and particularly the all of our material bodies, is but a basis, on which the spiritual principles of the higher and eternal world rest ”

“ That most wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles, the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense, the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of man—here consequently the organic soul—is in the blood and in the five or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood and afterward to provide for its circulation—or perhaps by maintaining a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. ”

“ Yet that such an internal feeling exists in every human mind, is evident from experience, and is moreover confirmed by the general application of the term touch to express such feeling,—as may be seen by consulting the best writers in our English language. The organ then of bodily touch, it is plain, is in connection with the higher organs of mental touch, being at once their basis, their support, their monitor, and their representative figure ”

“ Summary on Leaf-climbers.—Plants belonging to eight families are known to have clasping petioles, and plants belonging to four families climb by the tips of their leaves. With all the plants observed by me, the young internodes revolved more or less regularly, in some cases as regularly as does any twining plant, and at various rates, but generally rather rapidly. Some few can ascend by twining spirally round a support. ”

“ Some internal secretions stimulate, others inhibit, and the same secretions may under different conditions do either. This fact is the source of many degrees and varieties of energy and formative power in the organism. Taken altogether, the internal secretions are the forces which build up the man’s and woman’s distinctively sexual constitution: the special disposition and growth of hair, the relative development of breasts and pelvis, the characteristic differences in motor activity, the varying emotional desires and needs. ”

“ Now, with regard to the whole of man’s organization, the organic body as the third constituent of human existence, I will merely remark that, just as the triple principle of body, soul, and spirit is repeated in the special and narrower spheres of the senses, the instincts, and the passions, and even in the different forms in which a disordered intellect usually manifests itself, so also it admits of a further application to the organic body in general. ”

“ External things are so connected with internal things that they make one in all that is done. Let this be illustrated by examples from several things in man's body. Everywhere in it are things external and internal. The external are called skins, membranes and coverings; the internal are forms variously composed and woven of nerve fibres and blood vessels. The covering over these enters into them by extensions from itself even to the inmost, so that the external or the covering unites with the internals or the organic forms of fibres and vessels. ”

“ From all this it follows that the interiors of the mind act as a one with the interiors of the body, and the exteriors of the mind with the exteriors of the body. The interiors of the mind, likewise the interiors of the body, will be considered further on, when degrees of life have been treated of. ”

“ Afterwards by divine operation and sovereign power, most strange and wonderful internal changes took place, and strong organs, passions, affections, and agreeable qualities rose up all adorned with beauty. When man comes to look upon his organs and members, whether upon the external, as the hand, the foot, the eye, the tongue and the mouth, or upon the internal organs, as the liver, the stomach and the spleen, he sees that each is the result of a special wisdom, that each one has been created for some peculiar use, and that each one is in its place and perfect. ”

“ CHAPTER XI SOME HISTORIC PERSONAGES THE INTERNAL SECRETIONS IN HISTORY According to the views, facts and guesses concerning human personality, as a body-mind complex dominated by the internal secretions, outlined in the preceding pages, biography, and human history as the interaction of biographies, become capable of interpretation from a new standpoint. If human life, in its essentials, is so much the product of the internal messenger system we speak of as the endocrines, then biography should present us with a number of illustrations of their power and influence. ”

“ But keeping to man, these cells form themselves into societies, which we call tissues, these into others we call organs, and the organs form together a corporate organization, the body, which in a healthy state is subservient to the synthesizing forces emanating from the Heart, where lives the source of life, the divine Ruler. So the organs work together in harmony. If any organ begins to absorb more attention and life than is due to it, not only does it suffer itself, but brings discord into the whole. ”

“ But the external signs of division of the body no longer correspond, as in Annelids, to the distribution of the internal organs, which, with a partial exception in the case of the nervous system, are now unities contributing to the well-being of the whole. ”

“ It was like being turned inside out, organ by organ—your heart and your liver and your guts and all the rest, each carefully turned inside out, the way a woman takes off her gloves, smoothing each one with great precision. ”

“ At the solar plexus, the dynamic knowledge is this, that I am I. The solar plexus is the center of all the sympathetic system. The great prime knowledge is sympathetic in nature. I am I, in vital centrality. I am I, the vital center of all things. I am I, the clew to the whole. All is one with me. It is the one identity.
But at the lumbar ganglion, which is the center of separate identity, the knowledge is of a different mode, though the term is the same. At the lumbar ganglion I know that I am I, in distinction from a whole universe, which is not as I [32] am. ”

“ In truth, the actions of the alimentary canal, necessary to keep up the supply of the blood and the actions of the circulating system, which impart their action to most of the assimilating and secreting organs of the human body, all taking place in sensitive parts, all, of course, attended by sensation, and all produced by sensation, constitute a system of internal sensations, numerous beyond what it is easy to conceive,—some pleasurable, some painful,—and of all possible modifications of pain and pleasure ”

“ Now, the abnormal conditions of the surface become at once apparent to our senses; but those diseased conditions which concern the internal organs require no ordinary exercise of judgment to discover them. The outward form masks the internal parts, and conceals from our direct view, like the covers of a closed volume, the marvellous history contained within. ”

“ The physical organism is undoubtedly the means by which the mental susceptibility to pleasure or pain is reached from the external universe; but, unless there is a mental organism to feel the pleasure or the pain, the action of the physical organization is nothing but the excitation of the nervous system. I, therefore, [Pg 532] make a distinct class among the mental systems, and assign to it the faculty of experiencing mental pleasure or mental pain as a capacity distinct from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves. ”

“ But again, as facility converts pain into pleasure, so it often converts pleasure into pain, when it is too great, and renders the actions of the mind so faint and languid, that they are no longer able to interest and support it. ”

“ These countless and various delights are nevertheless united in an order so that they mutually regard one another, as do the uses of every member, organ and inner part of the body. They are even more like the uses of each vessel and fibre in every member, organ and vital part; each and all of which are so related that they regard each of its own good in the other, and thus in all, and all in each. ”

“ As the human body derives its powers and faculties from the soul, and is formed by it, we can find in the body a likeness of the soul. The body upon the outside, the epidermis, is dead and passive. As we pass inward, there is the sensitive tissue of the dermis, the muscles, the veins and arteries; still more interiorly is the nervous system, and then the nervous fluids that infill it. ”

“ The organs of sense sending their judgments by the sensory nerves from the exterior, the organ of feeling from the interior, and we are compelled to infer that every particle of matter in the animate body has judgment; and that in the organs of sense they have judgments of cognition, but in the mechanical organs they have judgments of good and evil. ”

“ One of these nerve centers, the brain, is the instrument of the intellect and the other nerve center is the instrument of feeling, not of base and shameful feelings, as many people think, but of the most exquisite and beautiful feelings of which a human being is capable. As the beautiful thoughts of man may be distorted into vicious and sinful things, so may the exquisite feelings which flood forth from the sex nerve center be debased and distorted into sins. ”

“ To understand this clearly we must bear in mind the principle which modern psychology is gradually adopting, that of the unity of the organism.
The Organism is a Unit which cannot, except for reasons of pure convenience, be split into entities of a contrasted character, such as body and mind, matter and soul, etc. To every physical phenomenon corresponds a simultaneous mental manifestation and vice versa. The body is the tangible [Pg 50] aspect, the mind, the intangible aspect of the organism. ”

“ The inner Being, the Being of Action—the word he used to designate an unknown specialization—the mysterious nexus of fibrils to which we owe the inadequately investigated powers of thought and will—in short, the nameless entity which sees, acts, foresees the end, and accomplishes everything before expressing itself in any physical phenomenon—must, in conformity with its nature, be free from the physical conditions by which the external Being of Reaction, the visible man, is fettered in its manifestation. ”

“ The great bulk of all diseases, we will find, as we are continually finding more and more, are in the mind before being in the body, or are generated in the body through certain states and conditions of mind.
The present state and condition of the body have been produced primarily by the thoughts that have been taken by the conscious mind into the subconscious, that is so intimately related to and that directs all the subconscious and involuntary functions of the body. ”

“ In the first instance then we must confine ourselves to those changes of state in the nervous central organs upon which everything is based, the changes and series of changes in system C. It is from the nature and the states of the central organ alone that the one simple principle must ultimately proceed to which we may refer all the most complicated manifestations of our being, as well as our most simple movements. ”

“ Those I call Internal which are inflicted on the Soul, while it is yet in the Body; such are Anxiety, Penitence, Fears, and a thousand pangs and stings of Conscience. Those are Posthumous; which are inflicted upon the same Soul, but then when it is freed and separate from the Body. ”

“ Yet these natural and temporal uses of the bodily organ of touch, wonderful and important as they are, admit of no comparison with the spiritual and eternal uses of the same organ, whether viewed as an instrument of producing the sensation of touch, or as a medium of communication between the great world of outward nature and the little world of the human body. ”

“ To what kind or mode of action shall we then look for the legitimate application of the term? In answer to this query, we may, I think, without fear of the consequences, put the following cases as exemplifying and justifying the use of the term Instinct in an appropriate sense. First: when there appears an action, not included either in the mere functions of life, acting within the sphere of its own organismus; nor yet an action attributable to the intelligent will or reason; yet, at the same time, not referable to any particular organ,—we then declare the presence of an Instinct. ”

“ One system, known as the Sympathetic, is the channel for all those activities which are not consciously directed by our volition, such as the operation of the digestive organs, the repair of the daily wear and tear of the tissues, and the like. The other system, known as the Voluntary or Cerebro-spinal system, is the channel through which we receive conscious perception from the physical senses and exercise control over the movements of the body. ”

“ God has made our body whole and intire, says your Author: by which he will prove that no holes must be made in the body to let out excrementious matter, and therefore he thinks that body to be whole and intire which is without an Issue, when as yet our bodies have numerous issues, which are the pores of the skin, to let out sweat; and therefore if he counts that body not to be whole and intire that has Issues, then no humane body is intire. Certainly, no Artificial Issue will make the body maimed, but it will nevertheless continue whole and intire although it has Issues. ”