CHAPTER IX 



RECAPITULATION 



ACCORDING to the conclusions at which we have 

 arrived a living creature may be defined more 

 appropriately by its impulses than by its organs : 

 its organs are, in fact, the products of its impulses. 

 We do not see because we have eyes, but we have 

 eyes because we have an impulse to see. This 

 statement may appear paradoxical at first sight : 

 but on further consideration its truth becomes 

 self-evident : for how, indeed, could a minute 

 fragment of protoplasm develop an eye unless 

 there was within it an impulse to do so, or unless 

 it was constrained by an impulse from outside ? 

 An organ which is not animated by an impulse 

 degenerates into a useless survival, like the 

 rudiments of hind limbs in the whale or the muscles 

 by which man once moved his ears. But an im- 

 pulse needs no organ in order to manifest itself. 

 The primitive forms of life can appreciate light 

 without eyes, and can feel and recognize their 

 food without sensory organs ; and we have seen 

 that from less humble ranks of the animal 

 kingdom illustrations can be drawn of the dis- 

 charge of functions that ordinarily appertain 

 to special organs, by the unspecialized vitality 

 of the body as a whole. We must etherialize our 

 conceptions of Life as we have begun to etherialize 

 our conceptions of Matter : we must regard it, 

 not as a series of activities that are produced by 

 a particular type of substance or machinery, but 



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