92. Let the social organism furnish us with an illustration. At the present moment there is a movement against the retail shopkeepers of London in favor of Co-operative Stores. The stimulus of getting better goods and cheaper, attracts the flow of custom from its old channels; and if this continue a certain time the new arrangements will be so thoroughly organized, and will work so easily, that Co-operative Stores will to a great extent supplant the retail shops. But if from any causes the stimulus slackens before this reorganization has passed from the oscillating into the permanent stage—if the goods are not found to be superior, or the cheapness not worth the extra trouble—the old influences (aiding our indolence) which have been long and continuously at work, will cause the social organism to resume its old aspect, and the co-operative “varieties” will disappear, or exist beside the ancient “species.”
In the one case as in the other a glance at the process is enough to detect that the increase in the activity has been preceded by a corresponding increase in the structure. The muscle has not been enlarged by extra activity, but with it. The co-operative action has grown with each additional co-operator. Looking at the cases from afar we may justly say that development has been due to function; but looking to the process we see that each increment of activity was necessarily dependent on an increment of substance. When changes of habit or adaptation are said to produce modifications in structures, this is true in as far as one modification of structure necessarily brings with it correlative modifications, the growth of one part affecting the growth of all more or less; but we must remember that to render the structure capable of new adaptations corresponding modifications must have been going on. The retail shopkeepers might securely laugh at the co-operative movement if the respectable families would not or could not become co-operant. When Mr. Spencer urges that “not only may leaf-stalks assume to a great degree the character of stems when they have to discharge the functions of stems by supporting many leaves, and very large leaves, but they may assume the characters of leaves when they have to undertake the functions of leaves,” I would ask if he is not reversing the actual process? The stem cannot assume the functions of a leaf until it has first assumed the character of a leaf. The assumptions of both must be gradual, and pari passu.
93. The hand is an organ, its function is prehension. The performance of this function in any of its numerous applications is rigorously limited by the structure of the hand—the bones, muscles, nerves, circulating and absorbent vessels, connective tissue, fat, etc. Fatigue the nerve, and the function will be feebly performed; exhaust it, and the function ceases; diminish the action of the heart, tie an artery, or vitiate the structure of the blood, and the function will be correspondingly affected; stiffen the tendons, soften the bones, diminish the synovial fluid, or increase the fat—in short, make any alteration whatever in the structure of the hand, and an alteration is necessarily produced in its function. So rigorously is function dependent upon structure, that the hand of one man will execute actions which are impossible to another. The hand of a baby is said to be the same in structure as the hand of a man; and since the powers (functions) of the two are notoriously different, we might rashly conclude that here function was dissociated from structure. The case is illustrative. In baby and man the structure is similar, not the same; the resemblance is of kind, not of degree; and the function likewise varies with the degree. The penny cannon which delights the child is similar in structure to the ten-pounder which batters down walls; and though, speaking generally, we may say that the function of both is to fire gunpowder for human ends, no one expects the penny cannon to be employed in warfare. In physiology, as in mechanics, the effect varies with the forces involved.
There can be no doubt that an exaggerated activity will produce a modification in the active organ, for this is only the familiar case of increased growth with increased exercise, and this is the biological meaning in which Function can be said not, indeed, to create, but to modify an existing Organ. Preceding the activity there must be the agent. Every organ although having its special function has also the properties of all the tissues which constitute it. The function is only the synthesis of these properties to which a dominant tissue gives a special character. The eye, for example, though specially characterized by its retinal sensibility to light, is largely endowed with muscles, and its movements are essential to Vision. The intestinal canal, again, though specially characterized by its secretions for the decomposition of food, has muscles which are essential to Digestion. In many animals, especially vegetable-feeders, there is an exaggeration of the muscular activity in certain parts of the intestinal canal which is only possible through a corresponding development of the muscular tissue, so that in some birds, crustaceans, and molluscs we find a gizzard, which is wholly without a mucous membrane to secrete fluids, and which aids Digestion solely by trituration.
94. Mr. Spencer, as I have already suggested, seems to have been led into his view by not keeping distinctly present to his mind the differences between Properties of tissue and Function, the activity of an organ. “That function takes precedence of structure,” he says, “seems implied in the definition of Life. If Life consist of inner actions so adjusted as to balance outer actions—if the actions are the substance of Life, while the adjustment constitutes its form; then may we not say that the actions formed must come before that which forms them—that the continuous change which is the basis of function must come before the structure which brings the function into shape?” The separation of “actions formed” from “that which forms them” is inadmissible. An action cannot come before the agent: it is the agent in act. The continuous change, which is the basis of Vitality, is a change of molecular arrangements; and the organ which gives a special direction to the vital activity, e. g. which shapes the property of Contractility into the function of Prehension, this organ must itself be formed before it can manifest this function. It is true that in one sense the organs are formed by, or are differentiated in, a pre-existent organism; true that the general activity of living substance must precede the special activity of any organ, as the expansions of steam must precede any steam-engine action; but the general activity depends on the general structure; and the special actions on the special structures. If by Organization we are to understand not simply organized substance, but a more or less complex arrangement of that substance into separate organs, the question is tantamount to asking whether the simplest animals and plants have life? And to ask the question, whether Life precedes organic substance? is tantamount to asking whether the convex aspect of a curve precedes the concave! or whether the motions of a body precede the body! To disengage ourselves from the complicated suggestions of such a word as Life, let us consider one of the vital phenomena, Contraction. This is a phenomenon manifested by simple protoplasm, and by the highly differentiated form of protoplasm known as muscle. In one sense it would be correct to say that Contractility as a general property of tissue precedes Contraction, which is specialized in muscle. But it would be absurd to say that muscular contraction preceded the existence of muscle, and formed it. The contractions of the protoplasm are not the same as muscular contractions any more than the hand of a baby is the same as a man’s; the general property which both have in common depends on the substance both have in common; the special property which belongs to the muscle depends on its special structure. An infinite activity of the contractile protoplasm would be incompetent to form a muscle, unless it were accompanied by that peculiar change in structure which constitutes muscle. The teakettle might boil forever without producing a steam-engine or the actions of a steam-engine. That which is true of one function is true of all functions, and true of Life, which is the sum of vital activities.
95. It is this haziness which made Agassiz “regret to observe that it has almost become an axiom that identical functions presuppose identical organs. There never was a more incorrect principle leading to more injurious consequences.”[43] And elsewhere he argues that organs can exist without functions. But this is obviously to pervert the fundamental idea of an organ. “The teeth of the whale which never eat through the gums, and the breasts of the males of all classes of mammalia,” are cited by him as examples of such organs without functions; but in the physiological significance of the term these are not organs at all. It is no more to be expected that the breasts of the male should act in lactation, than that the slackened string of a violin should yield musical tones; but the breasts of the male may be easily stimulated into yielding milk, and the slackened string of the violin may be tightened so as to yield tone. Even the breasts of the female do not yield milk except under certain conditions, and in the absence of these are on a par with those of the male.
96. Organized substance has the general properties of Assimilation, Evolution, Sensibility, and Contractility; each of the special tissues into which organized substance is differentiated manifests a predominance of one of these properties. Thus although the embryo-cells all manifest contractility, it is only the specialized muscle-cell which continues throughout its existence to manifest this property, and in a dominant form; the muscle-cell also assimilates and develops, but besides having these properties in common with all other cells, it has the special property of contracting with an energy not found in the others. All cells respire; but the blood-cells have this property of absorbing oxygen to a degree so far surpassing that of any other cell that physiologists have been led to speak of their containing a peculiar respiratory substance. In like manner all, or nearly all, the tissues contain myeline—which indeed is one of the chief constituents of the yolk of eggs—but only in the white sheath of the nerves is it detached and specialized as a tissue.
97. But while Sensibility and Contractility are general properties of organized substance, specialized in special tissues; Sensation and Contraction are functions of the organs formed by such tissues; and these organs are only found in animal organisms. It is a serious error, which we shall hereafter have to insist on, to suppose that Sensation can be the property of ganglionic cells, or, as it is more often stated, the property of the central gray matter. Sensation is the function of the organism; it varies with the varying organ; the sensation of Touch not being the same as the sensation of Sight, or of Sound.
98. We may consider the organism under two aspects—that of Structure and that of Function. The latter has two broad divisions corresponding with the vegetal and animal lives; the one is Nutrient, the other Efficient. The one prepares and distributes Food, the other distributes Motion. Of course this separation is analytical. In reality the two are interblended; and although the neuro-muscular system is developed out of the nutritive system, it is no sooner developed than it plays its part as Instrument in the preparation and distribution of Aliment.
This not being a treatise on Physiology, there can be no necessity for our here considering the properties and functions in detail. What is necessary to be said on Sensibility and Contractility will find its place in the course of future chapters; for the present we will confine ourselves to Evolution on account of its psychological, no less than its physiological, interest.