22O 



BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



to science, viz. the systemic nervous system, and sus- 

 tains it materially and dynamically, so that it can perform 

 neural functions, of an order altogether unknown to the 

 sympathetic nervous system itself, as well as a higher 

 order of functional work known as psychic, which brings the 

 human being into relationships outside itself, in a way 

 altogether transcendental and sui generis, and thereby 

 gives it views of itself, and the surrounding universe, 

 which blend with and finally bring it into intimate relation- 

 ship with, the great First Cause, of which it discovers 

 itself to be but the organic effect and the conscious pro- 

 duct, although the highest order of evolutionary effort, 



FIG. 79. EMBRYONIC AREA, WITH OUTLINE OF THE VASCULAR AREA, 

 FROM A RABBIT'S OVUM OF SEVEN DAYS. * (From Kolliker.) 



co, vascular area ; ag t embryonic area ; fr, primitive streak and groove ; rf, medullary 



groove. 



and, at present, the only representative of deeply rational 

 and moral being. 



The systemic nervous system, being the most highly 

 organised and functioned, structure in the human body, 

 is made capable of bridging over the gulf fixed, between 

 merely organised matter, and life, and the psychic, or 

 purely cerebro-dynamic, phenomena, and effecting a 

 union, between the inorganic matter of the cosmos, which 

 is connected with the organic life of the globe, on the one 

 hand, and the ultra-cosmic universe on the other, which 

 reaches from the illimitable and eternal, in the past, to the 

 illimitable and eternal, in the future, and represents the 

 progress so far as it has yet reached, of the process of 

 evolution, which has now become a great working theory, 



