44 OF HEALTH AND HUMAN NATURE. 



yet every organ of the organic functions may have its organic 

 sensibility heightened into animal sensibility, as inflammation, 

 for instance of the pleura and the joints, daily demonstrates : 

 indeed, in some organs of that class of functions, we invariably 

 have sensation ; — the stomach is the seat of hunger, in the lungs 

 we experience an uneasy sensation nearly as soon as their air is 

 expelled. 



The nerves of the animal functions run to the brain or spinal 

 marrow j those of the organic chiefly to ganglia ; but, as might 

 be expected, the two nervous systems have abundant com- 

 munications. 



The animal functions have not only a shorter existence than 

 the organic from their necessity of alternate repose, but they 

 flourish for a shorter duration, — they do not commence till birth, 

 they decline, and, in the natural course of events, terminate, 

 earlier, — the organs of sense and the mental faculties fail before 

 the action of the heart and capillaries. The decay of the animal 

 functions must, in truth, be the consequence of the decay of the 

 organic, because there are fundamentally in every part organic 

 functions, — circulation, nutrition, &c. and the perfect perform- 

 ance of these in the organs of the animal functions is indispen- 

 sable to the perfect performance of the animal functions. Hence 

 the impairment of these organic functions, even to a small ex- 

 tent, must derange or diminish the animal functions, which will 

 thus decline while there is still sufficient life for the organic 

 functions to continue. 



We thus find in every living system a class of functions, not 

 in themselves dependent upon mind, as perfect in the vegetable 

 as in the animal, and pervading every part of the system. In 

 animals there further exist certain parts which when endowed 

 with the common life of other parts, — with 'the organic proper- 

 ties, are able to perform peculiar functions which give us the 

 notion of mind : the organ of these functions is termed brain, 

 and, by means of nerves and medullary prolongations, it main- 

 tains a correspondence with the whole machine, influenced by 



