456 CAREER OF AN ORGANIC FORM. 



general conception we entertain of the nature of its equilibrium, it is 

 scarcely possible to present the subject in a manner that will coincide 

 with the diversified views of the profession. It is almost exclusively 

 with statical physiology that the physician has to deal. The healthy 

 and diseased states of the apparatus for digestion, absorption, respira- 

 tion, circulation, innervation, etc., are the things with which he is con- 

 cerned. It is respecting these that his mind is filled with the early prej- 

 udices of his education, and that his social necessities compel him to ex- 

 press with decision opinions unsuited to a close philosophical examina- 

 tion. He is to be pardoned for the mystification which circumstances 

 oblige him to cast upon the subjects of his study ; for resorting to the 

 vital principle as an explanation of his difficulties ; and for throwing upon 

 the nervous system the burden of every thing for which the imperfect 

 state of physiology does not enable him to account. He is not to be 

 blamed that the circumstances under which he is placed compel him to 

 appear to know more socially than he actually does know philosophically ; 

 and where, under such a false position of things, men have been spend- 

 ing their lives, it is not at all extraordinary that they should resist any 

 attempt at a reformation which strikes at the very existence of the doc- 

 trines they have adopted, and to which they stand committed. The old 

 physician must have his vital principle and his nervous agent, or he 

 must begin the alphabet of his studies again. If, therefore, statical phys- 

 iology stood alone, it must depend for its progress in the gradual removal 

 of error and introduction of truth upon one generation of physicians suc- 

 ceeding another ; but, fortunately, there is a circumstance which aids it 

 in this march, for the great branch on which we are now entering pre- 

 sents connections and considerations of a more purely philosophical kind; 

 free, at all events, from the entanglements of professional interests. Ca- 

 pable of being treated in the rigid manner of the positive sciences, and re- 

 moved, by reason of the nature of the topics with which it is concerned, 

 from the strifes of medical sectarianism, this noble subject can develop 

 itself in silence, without disturbance and without restraint ; and yet such 

 an advance can not take place without compelling a reflected effect to 

 ensue in statical physiology, and hastening the time when, by the united 

 consent of all physicians, it, too, will be cleared from every mystification, 

 and brought within the pale of exact and positive science. 



In the preceding book we have investigated the conditions of the 

 Career of an or- equilibrium of the animal mechanism: in this, therefore, we 

 game form. have ^ Q ftQ&i of its motion or career. Indeed, we might gen- 

 eralize our expression, and include the vegetable along with the animal, 

 for the two are so inseparably connected that we can not speak of the 

 one without, at the same time, dealing with the other. Viewed as re- 

 spects, its motion or career, an organism presents us with the striking 



