LIFE WHAT IS IT ? 443 



working, and self- determining attributes depend, in 

 which they are inherent, and by which they build up 

 the organic from the inorganic material with which they 

 are surrounded, vitalise it, and make it subservient to the 

 functional necessities of the organised and living body. 

 These two organisms, the sympathetic and the systemic 

 nervous systems, have distinct functional roles to per- 

 form, but are histologically connected, and so co-operate 

 in carrying on their dual offices, as to accomplish the 

 one combined vital work. As we have contended that 

 the systemic nervous system not only innervates but 

 nourishes the textures with which it is connected, and 

 in which it terminates, so we would suggest and contend 

 that, in like manner, the sympathetic nervous system 

 throughout its entire extent innervates and nourishes every 

 texture of the body with which it is connected, and in which 

 it terminates, by extracting from the haemal streams with 

 which its cells, and what we are entitled from analogy 

 to call processes, are surrounded, the necessary pabulum 

 required for the nutrition of these various textures, and 

 conveying it by what is equivalent to a set of axonal 

 processes from cell to cell into their substance proper, 

 for assimilation and integration. This method of nutrition 

 of the so-called non- nervous or sympathetically innervated 

 structures of the body presupposes the existence of circu- 

 latory facilities, for the passage of the nutritive materials 

 held in suspension by the haemal fluid to the cells in 

 which it is nutritionally deposited (and where it is kept 

 shut off from the effete systemic lymph), in the substance 

 proper of these cell textures. And we have every reason 

 to believe, basing that belief on all analogies of which we 

 are aware bearing on the subject, that the principle of 

 circulation, on the molecular scale, is used to effect the 

 necessary conveyance and metabolic transference of the 

 nutritive elements, by the selective and distributive agency 

 of the cells and their attached " pseudo - dendritic and 

 axonal " processes. 



The principle of vital energy or life, and the pabulum of 

 the various textures, are thus circulated and supplied to 

 the various non-nervous textures, by the sympathetic 

 nervous system, on exactly similar lines to those on 



