THE CONTENT-QUALITIES 8i 



ever, in the surrounding-world of the other subject, belong 

 partly to the world-as-sensed and partly to the world of action. 



THE OBSERVER AND THE ANIMAL 



The properties of which the animal is composed are like- 

 wise indications for the observer. These, after careful study, 

 he will divide into two halves — a receptor half, corresponding 

 to the world-as-sensed, and an effector half, corresponding to 

 the world of action. The receptor half receives the actions 

 of the surrounding-world, and the effector half reacts thereto. 



There is an astonishingly close correspondence, on the one 

 hand, between the animal's receptor organs and the world-as- 

 sensed and, on the other, between its effector organs and the 

 world of action. This must strike every observer, and it gives 

 the impression that the animal is merely an imprint of its 

 surrounding-world. On this impression are based all the 

 theories that see in the living substance of which aU animal 

 bodies are made, merely a plastic element, passively moulded, 

 which adjusts itself more or less exactly to external influences. 



These theories overlook one essential circumstance, 

 namely, that the surrounding-world of an animal, if con- 

 sidered by itself, is not a unity. On the contrary, the pro- 

 perties of the surrounding-world become linked up into a 

 unity only when they are in agreement with the properties 

 of the animal ; without this bond, they merely flutter about 

 disconnectedly. 



The convincing proof that the animal body does not owe 

 its form to external influences can only be given by our show- 

 ing that it displays properties that could not have been 

 imprinted on it from without. And this proof can never be 

 brought quite definitely. In the arrangement of their re- 

 ceptive or sensory organs, all the higher animals show a 

 distribution which has nothing to do with the arrangement 



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