The food benefits the soul only if it is utilized by the cells. But the nourishment that the soul craves does not satisfy the cells. Hunger and satisfaction are not even simultaneous in both, at least not as regards the same food. As a rule, the soul comprehends hunger when the cells are satisfied and vice versa. The soul’s hunger ceases the moment suitable food in sufficient quantity is introduced in the stomach. But this does not help the cells. Because, if the food remained in the stomach, to the satisfaction of the soul, the cells would soon die of starvation. The nourishment in the stomach is of the same importance to the cells as the provisions stored in the warehouse of the community are to the human individuals. These also would die from hunger if they let the victuals remain in the stores. The people must undertake to distribute, prepare and consume the food. Similarly the cells would starve to death unless they prepared the food in their common storage to suit their wants. The nourishment must be transformed into blood through the whole complicated process we call digestion. When this is done, the cells are able to satisfy their craving, and simultaneously a new hunger-feeling arises in the soul. Although it is the same food that satisfies both parties, it is the same food administered in different forms, at a different time, and in a different mode. We are concerned with dissimilar beings possessed of wants at once different and yet most intimately associated.
The connection is not difficult to understand. When the soul comprehends the need of the stomach, it is the collective want of the cells that comes to expression as the individual want of the soul. The different needs receive in different form an identical substance and this fact is obviously the connecting link between the soul and the cells. We might without difficulty carry out the same reasoning in regard to respiration and all the other physiological processes of the body.
From what we have said it is evident that the soul and the cells employ the body differently; but for the sake of clearness this ought perhaps to be further accentuated. The difference may be thus expressed: The soul acts with the members and organs of the body as units, whereas the cells perform the work of the organs as individuals. It would be easy to explain what this implies if we could point to similar conditions in human society. But no exactly similar institutions exist there, at least not to the same extent. They would exist if the ideal socialistic state was realized. The cells in their sphere have carried through a communism of the most rigid form. Their social organs then do not work at the cell-individual’s own initiative, but only upon the command of the central power and under its guidance and control. But even in the present organization of mankind, we find a few organs which offer a suggestive comparison. Especially is this the case with the defensive organ of society, the standing army, which is entirely under the control of the central power and acts only upon its command and under its control.
As to its composition the army is a mass of independently living individuals, co-operating so as to form an organic whole. All the work this unit performs is done by the thousands of soldiers of which it is composed. If the government decides to use this organ, that is if it declares war, we know that it leads, arranges and controls the army as one unit. It is not concerned with the soldiers as individuals, but only as organized masses.
Exactly analogous is the relation between the soul and the organs, composed of cells, in man’s organism. Here also the cell-individuals perform the work of the different organs. The soul is not concerned with the cells as individuals. It governs, guides and superintends the movements of the members as elements; that is, commands the cells as organic masses.
We now consider the following facts established. The soul and the cells are different beings with different wants. They do not feel or comprehend in the same way and can therefore not have immediate perceptions of each other. However true this is on one side it is on the other just as certain that they are so intimately connected as to form the same organism through the medium of which they feel their mutual wants and therefore must have some comprehension of each other. This strange and, as it may seem, contradictory relation depends on the fact that the union between the soul and the cells does not extend to their whole entity. We have seen that the soul comprehended only the collective not the individual wants of the cells. Within certain defined limits therefore they have a common substance that causes their marvelous co-operation through the body.
To understand and explain this coöperation we must make clear how the soul and the cells in their innermost nature are united. And we shall learn this by going to the bottom of the meaning of the expression that a common substance so governs their relationship that the collective wants of the cells become the individual wants of the soul.
How then are the soul and the cells intrinsically connected?
The answer may be derived in two ways. We might take both the subjective and the objective side of the wants as our point of view. If we first consider the subjective side the relationship between the soul and the cells may be stated as follows: