68 METAPHYSICS 



necessarily very dimly, that in the early stages of neural 

 evolution or neuro-genesis, where the sympathetic or pan- 

 cellular nervous system is conterminous and identical with 

 the cell and its nervine influence, and constitutes the life 

 of the uni-cellular organism, that kariokinesis and con- 

 sequent cell proliferation and increase constitute the 

 starting-point of the neuro-genetic process, inasmuch 

 as every cell unit is connected with another cell unit by 

 continuity or by a cell process, so that such processes, 

 remaining constituent parts of the growing cellular 

 community, must be regarded as indivisible from, and 

 intrinsically identical and conterminous with, that cellular 

 community or organic structure, and, therefore, that 

 every such structure is synonymous with the sympathetic 

 nervous system, and altogether a neural structure ; hence it 

 may be said that the sympathetic or cellular nervous system 

 nourishes itself by imbibition from without, and conveys 

 pabulum as well as energy through its so-called inter- 

 cellular fibres or processes, which processes must, therefore, 

 be porous enough to permit capillary transmission of that 

 pabulum, and so must be reckoned as circulatory media 

 in the double capacity of conveying both material and 

 energy from cell to cell by cell contiguity, or unbroken 

 histological continuity and insulated dynamic disposal or 

 conduction ; all which constitutes the ordinary functional 

 role of the sympathetic or cellular nervous system, through 

 the guidance of automatism and instinct. Further, we 

 have observed, when the growing needs of increasing and 

 more complex organic relationships required the provision 

 of a supplementary and improved nervature to aid the 

 existing sympathetic or cellular nervature adequately to 

 perform its functions, that an incipient systemic nervature 

 showed signs of development within and from the hitherto 

 sufficient sympathetic nervature, and that thereafter 

 the innervation of the gradually rising and increasingly 

 complex forms of animal life have continued to be inner- 

 vated by the dual co-ordinate and reciprocal nervatures, 

 and that in the latest and highest forms of animal life the 

 nervine administration of the vast machinery engaged in 

 systemic nerve work alone, and in its reciprocal relation- 

 ships v/ith the sympathetic, has been delegated to and 



