EXTRACT XVI. 



ON CIRCULATION, AND NUTRITION, OF, AND BY, THE 

 SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



TOWARDS obtaining a wider and clearer view, of the 

 applicability of the principle of circulation to the explana- 

 tion of vital phenomena, as they are to be observed 

 thoughout the whole extent of the animal and vegetable 

 world, we would formulate the comprehensive generalisa- 

 tion, that all life, living action, or vital activity, including 

 nutrition, consists of the movements, or circulation, of vital- 

 ised matter, along definite lines determined by, and due to, 

 the definite movement, or circulation, of tissue proto- 

 plasm and vital energy. Thus, from the gross movements 

 and circulation of the raw alimentary material, to its final 

 atomic incorporative disposal in the process of tissue 

 nutrition, a continuous chain of circulatory acts obtains 

 which is not even broken when the last vital atomic inte- 

 grative act continues into, and terminates as, the first 

 atomic act of devitalisation and disintegration except that 

 the circulation of vital energy ceases to be able, or 

 becomes insufficient to maintain, living atomic cohesion, 

 and so allows to begin the disintegrative circulation, and 

 resolution of the devitalised matter into its elementary 

 constituents. Circulation, therefore, according to this 

 view, in its first half, or its nutritive course, in the higher 

 animal world, and, for that part of it, in the vegetable world 

 also, is carried out under the active integrative, and 

 "uphill," influence of vital energy, while in the second 

 half of its course, or after the organic "watershed" of 

 vital eminence has been passed, so to speak, and the play 



