264 DESIGN IN NATURE 



much lower in the scale of being, as reflex in their nature ; that is, movements produced by external stimuli acting 

 on a supposed irritable integument. The movements of the star-fish are certainly spontaneous, voluntary, and 

 purposive : the animal changes from place to place and searches for and secures food, which it ingests, digests, 

 and assimilates. The mutilated frog and the unmutilated star-fish cannot be placed in the same category. The 

 frog whose brain has not been mutilated moves voluntarily and to given ends, and so does the star-fish which never 

 had a brain. Moreover, as already stated, plants and animals having no brain also move voluntarily. Voluntary 

 movements are not confined to animals provided with nervous systems with or without brains. It is necessary 

 on the one hand to guard against placing too high a value on reflex acts when speaking of the lower and lowest 

 animals, and on the other hand against not assigning to them a proper recognition in the higher and highest animals. 

 Reflexes, as a matter of fact, form intermediate hnks in nervous manifestations. Regarding them as involuntary 

 acts, they have much in common with rhythmic movements, to which they are more or less closely allied. They 

 are intermediate as regards the psychic functions. In this direction they become mixed up with the so-called 

 instinctive acts. They also trench on the voluntary acts. Certain voluntary acts, when often repeated and long 

 continued, become more or less automatic. Reflex acts, so far as they are automatic, are fundamental and vital : 

 they are means to ends, and, as such, afford evidence of design : they are connecting links as between mind and 

 matter, but they do not prove that nerve action may be resolved into mere irritability of the nervous system, or 

 that artificial stimulation is an exciting cause for psychic manifestations. In the reflexes, as in the rhythms, the 

 hand of the Designer can clearly be traced. Both the rhythms and reflexes make for certainty as against accident 

 in lower and higher living things. While it is difficult to assign limits to the rhythms, it is next to impossible to define 

 what constitute reflex acts. The movements of the sensitive and insectivorous plants are both voluntary and 

 reflex after a fashion. Similarly, the movements of the hollow viscera, as a class, display peculiarities which incline 

 to rhythms and reflexes respectively. 



The connection between rhythms and the so-called reflex acts are, in many cases, well marked, and a wide 

 survey of the subject incHnes me to believe that they are different phases of the same thing. This much is certain — 

 they are fundamental, and occur in both plants and animals. They are not dependent on the presence of a nervous 

 system as we know it, neither are they, strictly speaking, traceable to extraneous stimulation or irritabiUty in the 

 organisms in which they occur. The rhythmic movements of the plant Volvox globator, devoid of nerves, are as 

 perfect, in a way, as those of the heart of the animal richly supphed with nerves. The heart of the chick in its early 

 stages affords an example of an animal structure, devoid of nerves (and even of muscles), but which nevertheless 

 exhibits typical rhythmic movements. This suppHes an intermediate or transition link as between the rhythms 

 and reflexes of the plant and animal, and emphasises their fundamental character. 



Rhythms and reflexes, there can be Kttle doubt, are primarily inherent vital movements, which are not neces- 

 sarily dependent on any particular structure, nervous, muscular, or otherwise, nor on any form of irritabiUty or 

 stimulation, and which manifest themselves in young and adult plants and animals ahke. They are largely con- 

 nected with the development, growth, and nutrition of plants and animals, and are, in reaUty, the chief means by 

 which the elements are taken into and discharged from the bodies of plants and animals in the immature and mature 

 states. They also provide the mechanism and movements by which plants and animals are connected with the 

 outer world — that is, the material universe outside of themselves. 



By rhythms and reflexes plants and animals are kept going : they are original endowments by which life asserts 

 itself ; by which it incorporates and discharges matter ; and by which it recognises and moves amongst it. Some- 

 how the idea has got abroad, and is almost universally accepted, that the major portion of the movements of 

 plants and animals is due to an inherent irritabiUty of the moving parts, and that an outside stimulus must be 

 applied before movement can occur. Nothing can be further from the truth. All the essential movements in plants 

 and ammals are vital movements, and take place independently of either irritabiUty or external stimulation. Plants 

 and ammals absorb, assimilate, secrete and excrete, circulate their nutritious juices, and reproduce themselves quite 

 apart from both irritation and stimulation. To hold any other view would be to degrade Ufe, and reduce plants and 

 ammals to the condition of machines, which they certainly are not. Plants and animals manage their own affairs 

 irrespective of any outside mterference-the Creator excepted. They employ extraneous matter and force in 

 building up their bodies, but they control and direct the matter employed. They select and appropriate certain 

 elements and reject others : they avail themselves of certain physical forces and override and suppress others 

 according to circumstances. Thus, plants grow upwards in spite of the great law of gravitation. They however 

 in growing, freely avail themselves of other physical forces, such as attraction, repulsion, cohesion, adhesion capil- 

 larity, and especially osmose. These all play a part in the absorption, assimilation, secretion, excretion, circulation 

 and respiration m plants. Similar remarks are to be made of animals. 



The phenomena of endosmose and exosmose, by which plants and animals largely imbibe nutritive materials 



