COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



otherwise and .more appropriately distinguished 

 as the nutritive and relational systems — the 

 special office of the former being the integration 

 of nutritive material, in behoof either of the or- 

 ganism or of its derivative offspring, while the 

 special office of the latter is the maintenance of 

 relations between the organism and the environ- 

 ment. The demarcation is thoroughly distinct, 

 but it is not absolute ; since the relations each 

 moment set up even in the nutritive system 

 must correspond with certain general relations 

 of air, temperature, and assimilable material in 

 the environment. Now we have to note that 

 in the vegetal world such general correspond- 

 ences are all that are established ; there is no 

 system of organs differentiated for the purpose 

 of maintaining an equilibrium of relations with 

 the environment. In such simply organized 

 animals as the polyp there is no differentiation 

 of relational tissues or organs ; but the entire 

 surface of the animal, besides maintaining such 

 general correspondences as characterize vegetal 

 life, exhibits in a slight degree the irritability 

 and contractility which in higher creatures are 

 specialized in those tissues which form the rela- 

 tional organs. In the molluscoida, the property 

 of irritability being localized in a few nerve 

 threads uniting in ganglionic masses, and the 

 property of contractilitv being specialized in a 

 parallel manner, there is rendered possible that 

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