THE DYNAMICS OF CIRCULATION 183 



entity called the individual life, or the vital principle, the 

 coming and going of which are so absolutely, and visibly, 

 real, but at the same time intangible, and impressing the 

 human intellect with a faith in the existence of a necessary, 

 though hidden, communion, and continuity, between the 

 seen and tangible and the unseen and intangible ; and 

 begetting a belief in the reality of the existence of "things 

 not seen." Another vacuum formed by the uneducated 

 and but instinctively informed infant consists in the 

 shaping of its oral organs into the form of a " sucker," the 

 working of whose vacual principle is so perfect as to secure 

 the means of its material sustenance and growth and the 

 maintenance of that community of existence and feeling 

 between it and the maternal organism so essential in its 

 then helpless manner of life. Who is there, it may here 

 be asked, who cannot see in this co-existence and inter- 

 dependence, the greatest factor, not only in securing a 

 proper receptacle for the indwelling of the vital principle, 

 but the greatest educative power and so-called hereditary 

 influence which can be brought to bear in the formation of 

 future character, and the shaping of destiny, in the gener- 

 ations which have lived, and those which are to live ? 



The oral vacuum with which independent existence 

 begins, continues to be formed, in obedience to the law 

 of organic demand, dictated by sensations of hunger 

 and thirst, and has to be occupied, or filled, as long as life 

 continues by its proclaiming the material needs of the 

 body, and doing its best to satisfy them so long, as these 

 are supplied by the outer world in quantity and of 

 quality, suitable for its purpose. Suction literal, or modi- 

 fied is the prime moving factor in all such processes of 

 vacuum formation, and is accomplished by appropriate 

 structural disposition of nerves, muscles, and subsidiary 

 tissue elements. Thus, the infantile oral vacuum into 

 which the maternal mammary apex is inserted secures by 

 suction, or the creation of repeated vacua, the passage of 

 the mammary fluid into the mouth, and alimentary canal, 

 and the nutritive economy of the infantile organism a 

 process which, of course, necessitates the existence of a 

 previously prepared series of open spaces, or a vasculature, 

 affording the required vacual facilities. 



