CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND ITS CIRCUMSTANCES. 95 



stomach, shall be followed by the secretion of a solvent fluid 

 which will reduce them to a fit state for absorption. Special 

 outer properties must be met by special inner properties. 



When, from the process by which food is digested, we 

 turn to the process by which it is seized, the same general 

 truth faces us. The stinging and contractile power of a 

 polype's tentacle, correspond to the sensitiveness and strength 

 of the creatures serving it for prey. Unless that external 

 change which brings one of these creatures in contact with 

 the tentacle, were quickly followed by those internal changes 

 which result in the coiling and drawing up of the tentacle, 

 the polype would die of inanition. The fundamental pro- 

 cesses of integration and disintegration within it, would get 

 out of correspondence with the agencies and processes with- 

 out it, and the life would cease. 



Similarly, when the creature becomes so large that its 

 tissue cannot be efficiently supplied with nutriment by mere 

 absorption through its lining membrane, or duly oxygenated 

 by contact with the fluid bathing its surface, there arises a 

 need for a distributing system by which nutriment and 

 oxygen may be carried throughout the mass; and the func- 

 tions of this system, being subsidiary to the two primary 

 functions, form links in the correspondence between internal 

 and external actions. The like is obviously true of all those 

 subordinate functions, secretory and excretory, that facilitate 

 oxidation and assimilation. 



Ascending from visceral actions to muscular and nervous 

 actions, we find the correspondence displayed in a manner 

 still more obvious. Every act of locomotion implies the 

 expenditure of certain internal forces, adapted in amounts 

 and directions to balance or out-balance certain external 

 forces. The recognition of an object is impossible without 

 a harmony between the changes constituting perception, and 

 particular properties co-existing in the environment. Escape 

 from enemies implies motions within the organism, related in 

 kind and rapidity to motions without it. Destruction of 



