Organic act

“ All that the materialists can claim respecting man's agency in the production of life is, that he may take advantage of the uniform laws of nature, so far as they are known to him, planting seeds here, changing chemical conditions there, using different infusions in his experimental flasks,--organic or inorganic, as he may choose--and then await the action of these uniform laws. ”

“ On contemplating the facts from this point of view, we become aware that, besides those special effects of the co-operating forces which eventuate in the longer survival of one individual than of others, and in the consequent increase through generations, of some trait which furthered its survival, many other effects are being wrought on each and all of the individuals. Bodies of every class and quality, inorganic as well as organic, are from instant to instant subject to the influences in their environments ”

“ An organic body comprises all those parts, in one of which is an impulse to satisfy a need in the other, which that other part can not satisfy of itself; and the other of which is an impulse to satisfy a need of the first, which the first can not satisfy of itself. And this relation I call the organic tie of the parts. ”

“ Those which we will consider first are the [Pg 210] products of organic nature, which have been dwelt upon by a well-known writer as showing us the ultimate source of industrial interest generally, and also at the same time its natural and essential justice. ”

“ This he declares to be organic, and it is shown that society possesses the three conditions which belong essentially to the nature of an organic system; that is, the relations of the parts which form the whole are intrinsic, changes in it take place by an internal adaptation or growth, and its end forms an element in its own nature. This conclusion would, indeed, seem to be required by the fact that society consists of a number of individuals who are themselves organic units. ”

“ Food takes a mid-place, and then come the organic conditions; by which I mean the conditions which depend upon the state of the rest of the organic creation, upon the number and kind of living beings, with which an animal is surrounded. You may class these under two heads: there are organic beings, which operate as 'opponents', and there are organic beings which operate as 'helpers' to any given organic creature. ”

“ The theory applied to organic being is substantially this: there is, potentially, in every organism a higher manifestation. Its evolution is secured by the relation of its organic tendency to its environment. ”

“ The necessity of nourishment is the natural bridge between the two, and the equivalence of conditions and result, the indestructibility of matter and motion, establish at once the necessity of the inference that the organic can exist only at the ultimate expense of the inorganic, from which it is continually renewed. ”

“ This, for our present purposes, is the best view of the present condition of organic nature which I can lay before you: it gives you the great outlines of a vast picture, which you must fill up by your own study. ”

“ Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the resultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment in which he lives, in the same way, all the social manifestations—moral, juridical or political—of a people are the resultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as these are the determining causes of the given economic organization which is the physical basis of life. ”

“ And these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with all other things—these traits which in truth specially characterize organic bodies, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half of the organic kingdom from the other. ”

“ Those which we have in common with the vegetable, which are necessary merely to our individual, bodily existence, are called the functions of organic life, because they are common to all organized matter. Those, on the other hand, which are peculiar to animals, which in them are superadded to the possession of the organic functions, are called the functions of animal life. ”

“ A corollary of the highest importance may be deduced from the foregoing remarks, namely, that the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence or from which it has to escape or on which it preys. ”

“ In the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal would permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that large title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general principles which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at the phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed. ”

“ It is the distinctive moral relation existing in the plane of animal life that makes our connection with the organic world a different and more comprehensive relation than that which exists with inorganic Nature. ”

“ The assemblage of the functions of the first class, I call organic life, because all organized beings, vegetable or animal, enjoy it in a greater or less degree, and because organic texture is the only condition necessary to its exercise. The united functions of the second class form animal life, thus called, because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom. ”

“ However profoundly the laws of phenomena may be modified by such introduction of new and higher factors, the older and lower factors are still at work beneath the surface. And he who would adequately grasp the social problems of our time should bring to them a mind prepared by a study of the laws of organic life: for human beings, rational and moral though they may be, are still organisms; and man can in no wise alter or annul those deep-lying facts which nature has throughout the ages been weaving into the tissue of life. ”

“ In speaking of the causes which lead to our present knowledge of organic nature, I have used it almost as an equivalent of the word "living," and for this reason,—that in almost all living beings you can distinguish several distinct portions set apart to do particular things and work in a particular way. ”

“ Then you will be obliged to husband more economically your natural treasures, and you will experience changes which with us, in the course of historical development, are already things of the past. But this accomplished, the organic chemical industry of this country will commence to flourish. ”

“ Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been developed throughout by means of the fundamental forces of life, of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental laws of variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly changing environment. These forces and laws are universal in their action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole of the phenomena we are now discussing. ”

“ Similarly, the human, the social life sphere, rises infinitely higher than the organic, but is in nowise different from it; just as organic life does not differ essentially from the cosmic. Here, also, we meet, on the border-line which leads from the organic into the social life sphere, the natural organic race which, compared with the higher humanitarian life, is spiritless. ”

“ It was natural that those who had been foremost in preaching mindless designless luck as the main means of organic modification, should lend themselves with alacrity to the task of getting rid of thought and feeling from all share in the direction and governance of the world. ”

“ There is in all organic nature, whether organic kingdom, organic individual, or organic tissues, a law of variation, strongest in the early stages, limited very strictly by another law—the law of inheritance, of like producing like. ”

“ But in our thoughts to-day, as we discuss the essential nature of the process of organic development and the mutual causal relations between rudiments and their products, the same contradictory views are present, altered only as our methods of expression have altered. ”

“ That a certain amount of influence is exerted by the environment on the course of the processes of development of the organic world, will however be acceded to by the defenders of the phyletic vital force. ”

“ Multitudes of these, having diverse tendencies, are competing with one another for opportunity to exist and multiply; and the organism, as a whole, is as much the product of the molecules which are victorious as the Fauna, or Flora, of a country is the product of the victorious organic beings in it. ”

“ We cannot serve the God of philosophy and the Mammon of common sense at one and the same time, and yet it would almost seem as though the making the best that can be made of both these worlds were the whole duty of organism. ”

“ Any association with a given end will have laws determined with reference to that end. When we pass, however, from the organ to the tissue, we still have an organic structure with certain rules of conduct and corresponding instincts, but we no longer have a definite end or a fixed material. The material, that is, is to be regarded as developing and determining the development of the subsidiary organs. And since the most efficient society normally survives, we may [Pg 131] inversely infer from the survival of a society that it has developed the properties on which its efficiency depends. ”

“ Hence, before we seek to estimate the value of man's life, we will cast a glance at the significance of organic life generally.
An impartial survey of the history of organic life on our planet teaches, first of all, that it is a process of constant change. ”

“ As the brute creation as well as human beings share in a physical organization which expresses each variety of life, there is not the same sharply-dividing line between the various categories of animal life as there is between organic and inorganic Nature. ”

“ The theory divides itself into two parts—the production of organic life from the inorganic world; and the progressive development of the several species from the first simple elementary forms of life. ”

“ Our bodily structure in the large or whole, as necessary to an understanding of the general conditions in man's physical life and as fundamental to instruction in health. The more important native and foreign animals and plants; their growth and life, together with their importance in nature's economy. The natural forces which have greatest significance for organic life and for man's efficiency. ”

“ As the nutritive faculty is alone the property of vegetables, and sensation, of animals, while to the more perfect animals locomotion also belongs, so are these three activities also development steps of the human soul, the antecedent being the necessary condition of, and presupposed in time by, the subsequent, while the soul itself is nothing other than the union of these different activities of an organic body in one common end, as the entelechy of the organic body. ”

“ But when these appetencies and propensities of the parts of organic matter to unite with each other cease, the chemical affinities of attraction and the aptitude to be attracted, and of repulsion and the aptitude to be repelled, succeed, and reduce much of the solid matters back to the condition of elements ”

“ And so in nature everywhere organic forms are being organized out of the elements, and the movement or arrangement of these elements and of their accompanying forces is controlled by the efforts put forth in the realization of interests. If the interests so achieved are often repeated so as to become automatized or habitual, the organic form becomes fixed, capable of description as a species, and henceforth arises automatically. ”

“ The view here advocated, on the other hand, regards the whole organic world as arising and going forward in one harmonious development similar to that which displays itself in the growth and action of each separate individual organism. ”

“ It is a something in the life and in its varied method or law of operation which constitutes the actual difference between the inorganic and organic, between the vegetable and animal, and, most of all, between the merely animal and man. Creative Life is always intelligently operating according to a definite plan and fixed laws ”

“ The scientific problem is to correlate the several aspects of social change and to measure the kind and amount of growth in the light of criteria not necessarily ethical but analogous to those that might be employed by the biologist in dealing with organic evolution. ”

“ Organic being, as such, is the final term to which the generalization must be carried before the true scope of organic evolution can be adequately grasped by the mind. Individuals perish and are decomposed; species become extinct; genera, families, and whole classes, are swept from the earth. The broadest divisions into which the organic kingdoms of Nature have been classified have each their periods of ascendency and decline. But organic evolution ever continues. Progress in organization is the constant result. ”

“ The Idea of an Organic or Living Being includes this peculiar condition—that its construction and powers are such, that it constantly appropriates to itself new portions of substance which, so appropriated, become indistinguishable parts of the whole, and serve to carry on subsequently the same functions by which they were assimilated. ”