406 BIOLOGY. 



intestine has opened at its nobler extremity? will 

 not such ribs be members, arms, digits ? The members 

 or limbs are the members of the trunk, or ribs that have 

 opened in front ; they are the thorax that has opened in 

 front ; and hence are nothing new, but only something 

 emancipated or set free. Such ribs can be none other 

 than motor organs ; for they were previously nothing 

 else. Then, however, they performed motion in the 

 service of the viscera ; at present, where they are absolved 

 from this service, they execute it only in accordance to 

 the will of the head, simply according to its will, for they 

 are verily nothing more than motor ribs. Where, how- 

 ever, or in what region of the body will the ribs attain 

 unto such freedom ? Without doubt, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the head, and thus at the very spot where the 

 lungs derive one of their extremities. The limbs are 

 therefore cervical ribs. 



2372. The arms are a thorax, consisting quite purely 

 of bone and muscle, and represented as isolated or 

 detached from the viscus, or the lung ; on this depends 

 their nobility, or, in other words, upon what is vege- 

 tative having been wholly left behind. 



2373. The arms, when clasped together by the fingers, 

 are a thorax without viscera, without heart and lungs ; 

 they are destined to inclose a whole body in the em- 

 brace. 



2374. By an embrace that which is embraced has 

 been made our viscus ; it has been adopted as our ani- 

 mal heart, and as our animal vital organ or lung. The 

 embrace has an exalted physiological signification, and 

 precisely that which it unconsciously possesses in the state 

 of pure love. Nature always thinks more nobly than 

 we do. We follow blindfold her beautiful regulations, 

 and she rejoices in the sport. 



2375. As the fundamental number of the branchiae is 

 five, so also must the limbs represent five ribs ; they split 

 into five digits or fingers. The feet of the Crustacea 

 and Insects generally do not correspond to our feet ; but 

 to our fingers. The lower organized animals have only 



