64 METAPHYSICS 



extent, influencing the other in the region of compound 

 and auto-determinant cerebration and neuro-muscular 

 function, while acting as one in the lower, where neuro- 

 muscular function is simple and automatic, and required 

 merely for organic purposes. 



The latter, or simple and automatically acting nervous 

 system, is synonymous with the sympathetic, and is, alone 

 or by itself, capable of meeting the entire requirements 

 of the earliest innervated organisms by producing and 

 distributing the necessary vital or nerve energy on which 

 their individual life and the perpetuation of their species 

 depend. Combined with, or added to this simple and 

 automatically acting nervous system, the sympathetic, at the 

 time when the conditions of animal life have become more 

 complex, is the systemic nervous system which, while not 

 abrogating or abolishing the functions of the former, or 

 sympathetic, incorporates it, so to speak, with itself, the 

 two blending and merging into a dual nervous system, 

 which henceforth works on joint principles in reciprocal, 

 varying, or changing proportions, according to the position 

 occupied by the individual animal in the scale of being. 



The neuro-genetic structural or evolutionary develop- 

 mental procedure implied herein seems to us to be the 

 organic basis on which is built up, or from which are 

 evolved, the dual nervine and neuro-mental attributes of 

 instinct and reason, each being dependent on the existence 

 of an individual nervous system, and both being combined, 

 in the higher animal orders, in the dual direction and 

 control of many unally impossible nervine phenomena. 



In the uni-cellular or lowest orders of animal life, as 

 well as vegetable life, the vitalised protoplasm composing 

 their organic textures, by the operation of the natural 

 forces surrounding and inter-penetrating them, responds 

 spontaneously and performs unaided the various functions 

 of these orders without being possessed of a nervous 

 system proper. In the animal orders immediately suc- 

 ceeding and rising above and from these, however, the 

 necessity for the possession of a structural arrangement 

 for the molecular and cellular constituents, whereby energy 

 can be produced, captured, or stored, and distributed by 

 them for vital purposes, becomes so urgent that the 



