[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
grain? But we will be told that "sensing, choosing, and selecting" pertain only to reasoning
beings, at least to the instinct of more structural animals than is the protoplasmic cell outside or
inside man. Agreed; but as we translate from the lecture of a learned physiologist and the works
of other learned naturalists, we can only say, that these learned gentlemen must know what they
are talking about; though they are probably ignorant of the fact that their scientific prose is but
one degree removed from the ignorant, superstitious, but rather poetical "twaddle" of the Hindu
Yogis and Tantrikas.
Anyhow, our professor of physiology falls foul of the materialistic theories of diffusion and
endosmosis. Armed with the facts of the evident discrimination and a mind in the cells, he
demonstrates by numerous instances the fallacy of trying to explain certain physiological
processes by mechanical theories; such for instance as the passing of sugar from the liver (where
it is transformed into glucose) into the blood. Physiologists find great difficulty in explaining this
process, and regard it as an impossibility to bring it under the endosmosic laws. In all probability
the lymphatic cells play just as active a part during the absorption of alimentary substances
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
STUDIES IN OCCULTISM
62
dissolved in water, as the peptics do, a process well demonstrated by F. Hofmeister. (6)
Generally speaking, poor convenient endosmose is dethroned and exiled from among the active
functionaries of the human body as a useless sinecurist. It has lost its voice in the matter of
glands and other agents of secretion, in the action of which the same epithelium cells have
replaced it. The mysterious faculties of selection, of extracting from the blood one kind of
substance and rejecting another, of transforming the former by means of decomposition and
synthesis, of directing some of the products into passages which will throw them out of the body
and redirecting others into lymphatic and blood vessels -- such is the work of the cells. "It is
evident that in all this there is not the slightest hint at diffusion or endosmose," says the Basle
physiologist. "It becomes entirely useless to try and explain these phenomena by chemical laws."
But perhaps physiology is luckier in some other department? Failing in the laws of alimentation,
it may have found some consolation for its mechanical theories in the question of the activity of
muscles and nerves, which it sought to explain by electric laws? Alas, save in a few fishes -- in
no other living organisms, least of all in the human body, could it find any possibility of pointing
out electric currents as the chief ruling agency. Electro-biology on the lines of pure dynamic
electricity has egregiously failed. Ignorant of "Fohat" no electrical currents suffice to explain to it
either muscular or nervous activity!
But there is such a thing as the physiology of external sensations. Here we are no longer on terra
incognita, and all such phenomena have already found purely physical explanations. No doubt,
there is the phenomenon of sight, the eye with its optical apparatus, its camera obscura. But the
fact of the sameness of the reproduction of things in the eye, according to the same laws of
refraction as on the plate of a photographic machine, is no vital phenomenon. The same may be
reproduced on a dead eye. The phenomenon of life consists in the evolution and development of
the eye itself. How is this marvelous and complicated work produced? To this physiology replies,
"We do not know"; for, toward the solution of this great problem --
Physiology has not yet made one single step. True, we can follow the sequence of
the stages of the development and formation of the eye, but why it is so and what
is the causal connection, we have absolutely no idea. The second vital
phenomenon of the eye is its accommodating activity. And here we are again face
to face with the functions of nerves and muscles -- our old insoluble riddles. The
same may be said of all the organs of sense. The same also relates to other
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]