Problems of Life and Mind. Second series by George Henry Lewes (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

82. What is meant by properties of tissue and functions of organs may be thus illustrated. Let us suppose ourselves investigating the structure of a ship. We find it composed of various materials—wood, iron, copper, hemp, canvas, etc.; and these under various configurations are formed into particular parts serving particular purposes, such as deck, masts, anchor, windlass, chains, ropes, sails, etc. In all these parts the materials preserve their properties; and wherever wood or iron may be placed, whatever purpose the part may serve, the properties of wood and iron are unaffected; and it is through a combination of these properties that the part is effective; while through the connection of one part with another the purpose becomes realized. The purposes to which masts, ropes, or sails are subservient may be called their functions; and these of course only exist, as such, in the ship. It is the same with the organism. We find it composed of various Tissues, and these are combined into various Organs or Instruments.34 The properties of Tissues remain the same, no matter into what Organs they may be combined; they preserve and exert their physical, chemical, and vital properties, as wood and iron preserve their properties. Each Tissue has its characteristic quality; and the Organ which is constructed out of a combination of several Tissues, more or less modified, is effective solely in virtue of these properties,35 while the Function of that organ comes into play through its combination with other organs. For example, muscular tissue has a vital property which is characteristic of it, Contractility; and muscles are organs constituted by this tissue and several others;36 such organs have the general function of Contraction, but whether this shall be specially manifested in the beating of the heart, the winking of the eyelid, the movement of the chest, or the varied movements of the limbs, will depend on the anatomical connections. The reader unfamiliar with Biology is requested to pay very particular attention to this point; he will find many obscurities dissipated if he once lays hold of the “principal connections.”

82a. Although Bichat’s conception was of great value, it was not sufficiently disengaged from the metaphysical mode of viewing biological phenomena. Both he and his disciples will be found treating Properties as entities, and invoking them as causes of the phenomena instead of recognizing them simply as abstract expressions of the phenomena. Readers of my First Series will remember how often I have had occasion to point out this common error: men having baptized observed facts with a comprehensive name, forget the process of baptism, and suppose the name to represent a mysterious agency. The fact that gases combine is expressed in the term affinity; and then Affinity is understood to be the cause of the combinations. The fact that bodies tend towards each other is called their gravitation, and Gravitation is then said to cause the tendency. The doctrine of vital properties has been thus misunderstood. While no one imagines that he can operate on affinity otherwise than by operating on the known conditions under which gases combine, many a biologist and physician speaks as if he could operate on the Irritability of a tissue, or the Co-ordination of muscles, by direct action on these abstractions.

Let it be therefore once for all expressly stated that by the property of a tissue is simply meant the constant mode of reaction of that tissue under definite conditions. The property is not a cause, otherwise than the conditions it expresses are a cause. And these conditions are first those of the organized structure itself, and secondly those of the medium in which it lives. Oxygen unites with Hydrogen to form water, but only under certain pressures; so likewise muscles manifest Contractility on being stimulated (that is their mode of reaction), but only under certain degrees of temperature, humidity, and a certain chemical composition of the plasmode. The property is so truly an expression of the co-operant conditions, that it is found to vary with those conditions, and to vanish when they vary beyond a certain limit.

An attempt has been made to restrict the notion of a property to an ultimate fact. Whatever is not reducible to known conditions is to be accepted as a property. Combustion, for example, is reducible to the molecular combination of oxygen and some other gas; but this combination itself is not reducible, and it is therefore christened affinity. I cannot accept this view. Admitting our inability to say why gases combine under certain conditions (and in this sense all facts are inexplicable and ultimate, unless we take the how as ample explanation of the why), I must still say that since affinity itself depends on the co-operation of known conditions, it is not less explicable than combustion. But the point is unimportant: what we have here to settle is the meaning of a property of tissue,—and that is the mode of reaction which that tissue manifests under constant conditions, internal and external.

83. The evolution of Life is the evolution of special properties and functions from general properties and functions. The organism rises in power as it ramifies into variety. Out of a seemingly structureless germinal membrane, by successive differentiations certain portions are set apart for the dominant, or exclusive, performance of certain processes; just as in the social organism there is a setting apart of certain classes of men for the dominant or exclusive performance of offices, which by their co-operation constitute Society. The soldier fights, but ceases to build or reap, weave or teach; the mason builds; the agriculturist sows and reaps; the priest and thinker teach; the statesman governs. In simple societies each does all, or nearly all; but the social life thus manifested is markedly inferior to the energetic life of a complex society. So with organisms. An amœba manifests the general properties of Nutrition, Reproduction, Sensibility, and Movement. But it has no special organs, consequently no special functions. The polype has a certain rudimentary specialization of parts: it has a simple alimentary cavity, and prehensile tentacles; and although by these it can seize and digest its prey, it can only do so in a limited way—all the manifold varieties and power of prehension and digestion observed in more complex organisms are impossible with such organs as the polype possesses.

84. Differences of structure and connection necessarily bring about corresponding differences in Function, since Function is the directed energy of the Properties of tissues. One organ will differ from another in structure, as the liver from the pancreas, or the kidney from the spleen; or one organ may closely resemble another but differ from it only in connections, as a sensory and a motor nerve, or an extensor and a flexor muscle. We must therefore always bear both points in mind. Every modification, structural or connectional, is translated by a corresponding modification in the office. The hand and the foot show this well. The tissues are the same in both, the properties are the same, and both have the same general function of Prehension; but their morphological differences carry corresponding differences in their uses.

Suppose we have a galvanic battery, we know that its electric force may be variously applied. Two pieces of charcoal fixed to the ends of its conducting wires give us the electric light; replacing the charcoal by a telegraphic apparatus we can transmit a message from one continent to the other; the wires dipped in a solution effect a chemical decomposition, dipped into a mixture of gases they effect a chemical composition. In these, and many other applications, the property of the battery is constant; but the functions it subserves have varied with the varying co-operants. So with the properties of tissue.37 Not only have we to bear in mind the organic connections of the tissues, but also the relation of the organs to their media. Swimming and Walking, for example, are both functions of the locomotive apparatus, but they are specially differenced by the media in which the animal moves.

85. The properties of tissues are their peculiar modes of reaction, and each tissue has its dominant characteristic, such as the Contractility of the muscle, and the Neurility of the nerve. But there has of late years sprung up a misleading conception, partly a consequence of the cell-theory, and partly of the almost inevitable tendency of analysis to disregard whatever elements it provisionally sets aside; this conception is the removal of the property from its tissue, and the localization of it in one of the organites—cell or fibre. This has been conspicuously mischievous in the case of the nerve-cell, which has been endowed with mysterious powers, and may be said to have usurped the place of nerve-tissue. I shall have to speak of this in the next problem. Here I only warn the student against the common error. The properties of a tissue depend on the structure and composition of that tissue, together with its plasmode and products; they vary as these vary. To select any one element in this complex, and ascribe the reaction of the tissue to that, is only permissible as a shorthand expression.

86. What has just been expounded may be condensed in the following biological law:—

Identity of tissue everywhere implies identity of property; and similarity of tissue corresponding similarity of property. Identity of organic connection everywhere implies identity of function; and similarity of organic connection similarity of function.

87. This law, first formulated by me in 1859, and then applied to the interpretation of nervous functions, was so little understood that for the most part it met with either decided denial or silent neglect; no doubt because of the general disinclination to admit that the properties and functions of the spinal cord could be similar to those of the brain, in correspondence with the similarity of their tissues and organic connections. Even Professor Vulpian, who adopted it, as well as my principal interpretations, hesitated, and relapsed into the orthodox view in assigning three different properties to one and the same tissue in cord, medulla oblongata, and cerebrum.38 In the course of our inquiries we shall so frequently have to invoke this law that I earnestly beg the reader to meditate upon it, and ask himself upon what other grounds, save those of structure and connection, the properties and functions can possibly rest? If on no other, then similarity in structure and connection by logical necessity involves similarity in property and function.

88. Closely connected with this law, which simply formulates the self-evident principle that every action is rigorously determined by the nature of the agent, and the conditions under which the act takes place, is the surprising question whether functions are dependent upon organs, or organs dependent on functions?—a question which sometimes takes this shape: Is Life the result of organization, or is organization the result of Life?

The vitalist, who holds that Life is an extra-organic agent, is logical in declaring organization to be the consequence of Life;39 but there are many organicists who conclude from certain facts that organs are developed by functions, and that organization is a result of Life. There seems, however, to be some equivoque here. I cannot otherwise understand how Mr. Spencer should have written: “There is one fact implying that Function must be regarded as taking the precedence of Structure. Of the lowest rhizopods which present no distinctions of parts, and nevertheless feed and grow and move about, Professor Huxley has remarked that they exhibit Life without Organization.”40 The equivoque here arises from the practice of calling all living bodies “organisms,” even