The fact that the vegetative processes of the organism are not governed and controlled by the soul may be observed by anyone also during his conscious state. In regard to respiration we may repress it only for a few minutes. A command is soon given by certain cells in the central nerve-system which against the soul’s will brings the organ in question into action. Experience tells us that strong agitations generally disturb the vegetative processes. Sudden fear, for instance, accelerates the heart’s motion. Therefore these processes take place more evenly with animals deprived of their brain just because disturbing influences from the soul are then impossible.
Thus it is certain beyond doubt that the cells not only execute but regulate and control through the central nerve-system a multitude of functions in which the soul does not take part. But just as certain it is that there are many functions which the cells could not perform without the co-operation of the soul. Vision, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling would be entirely meaningless to the cells without the aid of the soul. The same is the case in a high degree with the motions of the body which also require such a higher guidance. The dove could fly, the dog walk, and so forth, but the motions were relatively purposeless. The predetermined plan was lacking. The cells could assimilate the food, when brought into the body, but they could not search it in nature. Such action requires a power of combination that exceeds their measure of intelligence.
We see consequently that the cells may do without the soul in such functions as are not related to the exterior world comprehensible through our senses. Here they need the guidance of a higher, more developed intelligence. In the outside world with its more complicated relations, the soul is to the cells very nearly what we mean by the word Providence. The soul performs, in the interest of the cells, such a higher, regulating and guiding function.
The organism, then, is divided into two sections, separated by a sharply defined boundary. As independent and autocratic as the cells are in one of them, is the soul in the other. This bisection in two widely separated spheres is in itself remarkable, but may be explained, if we remember that the organism is an individual composed of lower individuals. As different as these classes of individuals are in their nature and faculties, equally incongruous are also the realms in which they dwell. The cells move in the atomic and molecular world. To them the molecules and atoms appear with a clearness comparable to the plainness with which the exterior world reveals itself to us. It is natural then that the cells attend to the vegetative functions of the organism which just fall within their sphere of life, a sphere of which the soul can obtain knowledge only indirectly by way of deductions. Equally obvious it is that only the soul can employ the organs of the body, the functions of which fall within the visible world.
We have now endeavored to obtain an understanding of the importance of the soul to the cells by depriving the latter of the direct influence of the former. This resulted from the removal of the brain, the organ by which the soul more directly expresses itself. But the soul is not actually removed from the body. It still remains in the whole cell-mass. The brain itself consists of cells, in which the soul is not present except as in all the other cells. The difference is only that the brain-cells are developed for the functions of thought, whereas the cells in the other organs are intended for their specific purposes. In order to remove the soul from the body we must remove the life from every cell. The soul, as we intend to show, is inseparably connected with every particular cell-individual. But in order to understand how the cells may be at once independent of, and yet intimately united with the soul, we must first know what an organism really is. Its nature and fundamental idea is the only thing that can explain this remarkable relationship. But it is just here as to the essential qualities of an organism that the conceptions are generally very dim and vague.
Commonly the organism is thought of as a very complicated mechanism whose members and organs mutually depend upon each other. The organism is what the word implies, a tool. But every tool is intended for somebody’s use. Who this one is, is not said, simply because it is considered self-evident. If it be a human organism, it is obviously the man who uses it; if it be an animal organism, it is the animal, and so on. That this is a truth, cannot be denied; but still it expresses only half the truth and scarcely that. Every organic body is used directly by the individuals that form its building material. The human organism is a society of cells, and it is these latter that first of all use the body’s organs for their purposes. But so dominating are the old ideas about the body, that even the cytologists themselves have not been able to shake them off. The cells are continually studied from man’s point of view, but what man may be from the cell’s point of view is never thought of.
We do not hereby deny all justification to the old conception. The body is also an organ for the soul. The latter, as experience shows, uses the body for its own specific purposes. But this takes place only to a somewhat limited extent. The incomparably larger part of the soul’s work, cares, and endeavors, is devoted to finding means to satisfy bodily wants. But so far as the soul provides for the necessities of the body, it acts as organ for the cells. When man believes that he is running his own errands, he is in reality carrying out the missions of those beings that compose his body. These latter demand for their purposes, if not all, yet at least the largest part of all the work the soul performs in this world.