Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

2040. These spinal nerves are, however, animal plexuses, which partly encroach upon the visceral nerves, and partly pass to the animal systems.

2041. There are therefore two kinds of spinal nerves, vegetative and animal, and as many of them as there are divisions in the viscera and in the animal systems.

2042. The nerves pass off symmetrically from the spinal cord, because the nervous mass belongs to the symmetrical osseous system. They form therefore rings both anteriorly and posteriorly.

2043. The nervous system does not consist of individual cysts, like its two animal teguments, or bone and flesh. It is at one time the type or image of the vascular trunk and its ramifications; at another the indifferent æther-mass, which does not crystallize; it is lastly the organic primary mass that has remained persistent, and must thus be coherent in texture. It is the blood continually streaming from the animal divisions of the heart.

2044. The whole animal nervous system is a tegumentary cyst with tubes passing off from it symmetrically in the form of rings.

2045. The spinal cord cannot be the highest. It has only the lowest signification, in so far as it stands in the service of the viscera and the sense of touch, and thus follows the position and arrangement of the bones. Thus the spinal cord is first of all an osseo-nervous mass.

2046. The nerves, as running for the most part forwards, are musculo-nervous mass; those running backwards or outwards are tegumentary or sensitive nerves. This signification furnishes us, also with the physiological function of these two divisions of nerves. The nerves are homologous with the flexors, the spinal cord with the extensors; the nerves with the air, the medulla with the earth; the former with the arteries, the latter with the veins; the nerves are thus what is more active, the medulla that which is more inert.

2047. On that account the nerves only are in intercourse with the world, while the medulla broods within itself. Consequently, both these nerve-formations are not as yet the pure self-substantial nervous blossom, which no longer imitates flesh and bone, but only itself.

Brain.

2048. The highest point attained by the lower systems are the orifices of the viscera, the mouth and the nose. The mouth is the first animal sign, which the plant gives off in the blossom from itself. The Noblest lies therefore at the anterior extremity of the animal, or in man in the direction upwards.