144 Science Religion and Reality 



The vortices impinge on one another. As a star decays and 

 its expansive force becomes encrusted by the third matter 

 another vortex will join with it. But if the central star be of 

 greater velocity than the new vortex, it will dash through the new 

 vortex and be seen as a comet. Sometimes the encrusted star will 

 settle in that part of the new vortex whose velocity equals its own, 

 and is then seen as a planet. The planets of our solar system have 

 all been caught up in the sun vortex. 



For the completion of the system of Descartes, it was necessary 

 for him to include the phenomena presented by living things. 

 Here his descriptions illustrate how much in the dark his age was 

 concerning the actual workings of the animal body. 



" I remained satisfied with the supposition that God formed 

 the body of man wholly like to one of ours, as well in the external 

 shape of the members as in the internal conformation of the organs, 

 of the same matter with that I had described, and at first placed in 

 it no rational soul, nor any other principle, in room of the vegetative 

 or sensitive soul, beyond kindling in the heart one of those fires 

 without light, such as I had already described, and which I thought 

 was not different from the heat in hay that had been heaped together 

 before it is dry, or that which causes fermentation in new wines 

 before they are run clear of the fruit. For, when I examined the 

 kind of functions which might, as consequences of this supposition, 

 exist in this body, I found precisely all those which may exist in us 

 independently of all power of thinking, and consequently without 

 being in any measure owing to the soul ; in other words, to that part 

 of us which is distinct from the body, and of which it has been said 

 above that the nature distinctively consists in thinking — functions 

 in which the animals void of reason may be said wholly to resemble 

 us ; but among which 1 could not discover any of those that, as 

 dependent on thought alone, belong to us as men, while, on the 

 other hand, I did afterwards discover these as soon as I supposed 

 God to have created a rational soul, and to have annexed it to this 

 body in a particular manner which I described." 



Thus he regarded animals as automata. He knew, for instance, 

 of the circulation of the blood, and, working from it, he developed a 

 most elaborate and carefully worked out theory of the action of the 

 animal body, Man, however, differed from animals, at least in his 

 present state, in the possession of a soul. This he believed to be 

 especially associated with a particular part of the body, the pineal 

 gland, a structure within the brain which, in his erroneous opinion. 



