334 THE ANIMAL AS A PRIME MOVER. 



after excision; the right auricle continues after the organ as a whole 

 has become quiescent, and has been known to exhibit motion fifteen 

 hours after death. The same independent and automatic action has 

 been detected in the dog's heart four days after the death of the animal. 

 The cold-blooded animals exhibit still more persistence of this local and 

 independent life of the organ, and the heart of the frog has been known 

 to pulsate with the motions of life, as a whole, for two or three days after 

 removal from its nerve connections. Every organ is a motor; every 

 protoplasmic cell is an elementary vital system. 



The motor and other movements of the machine are absolutely inde- 

 pendent of the peculiar nervous and mental characteristics of animal 

 life. This is shown not only by the facts elsewhere mentioned in a 

 similar connection, but also by the seemingly intelligent action of the 

 sensitive plants and many other vegetable organisms, by the movement 

 of the vegetable as well as of the animal protoplasms, by the energetic 

 action of the white corpuscles of the blood and of the amoeboid cells of 

 both animal and vegetable protoplasms. Heat, light, electricity, chem- 

 ical, and mechanical stimuli, alike, all provoke displays of motor forces 

 and energies in the simplest known forms of vegetable and animal 

 structure, and absolutely independently of intelligence, will, nervous 

 power, special circulatory and respiratory organs, or of location in the 

 organism of which they form the most elementary part. The rhythmic 

 action of the human heart, the voluntary movement of the animal 

 frame, the entrapping of its victims by the sensitive plant, the motions 

 of the bacteria, the changes of the amoeba and the protoplasmic cell are, 

 all alike, exemplifications of the inherent residence of motor energy 

 under conditions which involve entire absence of all the machinery of 

 thermodynamic or electrodynamic motors of any sort as yet familiar to 

 science. 



It is thus evident that the vital energy is independent on the one 

 hand of the familiar physical energies and forces, and on the other of 

 the mental powers of intellectual and soul life. It pervades the whole 

 system, as do the physical energies, and may attain great development 

 without reference to the condition of the physical or the psychical 

 energies. The doctrine of Quesne, " j)sychism," is to this degree 

 afforded some support. But the now universally accepted doctrine of 

 the evolution of the world from an earlier chaos compels us, it would 

 seem, to admit that all energies and forces and all matter aggregate 

 out of space, and Quesne's proposition maybe extended to every depart- 

 ment of physics and psychics. All space is pervaded by heat, light, 

 electricity, and magnetism; why not with vital and spiritual energies? 



The office of the vital force and its energy is apparently to give direc- 

 tion to the coarser physical energy of the muscle. It is the director of 

 the telegraphic current which notifies the energy of the muscle when 

 and how to exert itself. It coordinates the automatic movements, con- 

 trols the system as a whole, as well as in detail, and is itself the prin- 

 ciple of purely animal life. The organ which mainly controls and 



