5 8 METAPHYSICS 



for the genesis of a systemic nervous system, or nervature, 

 to meet the requirements of a voluntarily determined 

 innervation, with its added striped musculature and 

 attached skeletal structures, protective, prehensile, and 

 progressive. 



This last biogenic nervine phenomenon may be 

 regarded as the crowning act and finished product, 

 and, so far as biogenesis has allied itself with, or consists 

 of, the matter and energy of the cosmos in the evolution 

 of the flora and fauna of the globe, it is the scientific 

 raison d'etre of all preceding biogenesis ; it may, more- 

 over, be regarded as the conclusion, or summing up, so 

 to speak, of all biogenic problems, and the final 

 evolutionary product of the entire cosmic organic work, 

 material and dynamic, through which our planet has 

 passed since it was "launched into space." 



The systemic nervous system, with all that belongs 

 to it of material and immaterial, of ponderable and 

 imponderable, is the high-water mark of biogenesis, and, 

 even in its most rudimentary and elementary form, 

 constitutes the most profound departure from the earlier 

 species of innervation and biogenic procedure in the 

 whole history of organic life. Furthermore, we are 

 warranted in looking upon it as the culmination of all 

 the biogenic activities of the whole aeons and ages of 

 the entire organic events and plan of creation, and the 

 introduction of the most profound and inscrutable 

 problem of man's higher, immaterial, and immortal, 

 destiny. 



The biogenic origin of the systemic nervature in all its 

 parts thus becomes the greatest of all the functional work 

 of the sympathetic nervous system, and the highest type 

 of evolutionary product yet known to science. So distinct 

 and unique as an organic structure is the systemic nervous 

 system that we may look upon it as a separate organic 

 entity or living being evolved from, surrounded by, and 

 conjoined with the sympathetic nervature, each of the 

 nervatures having at the same time an independent, or 

 particular, and a communal functional r6k y and, to some 

 extent, a separate histological and physiological existence, 

 with an intimate anatomical relationship. So much so is 



