2370. The first bones were branchial arches or tracheal rings. When the lungs were developed from the branchiæ, the branchial arches were repeated as ribs or pulmonary arches. Lastly, should bones be formed, which are to be wholly in the service of the animal or the nervous system, so also must they be wholly liberated from the vegetative organs, and become self-substantial, i. e. have nothing else to do, but move. Free motor organs can be none other than ribs that have become free.
2371. These free ribs must inclose the respiratory organ or the integument, which has become an organ of animal life; they are the members or limbs. If we think of ribs, whose office is no longer to inclose lungs, which must no longer be subservient to the uninterrupted vital motion of respiration, and which are no longer united by pleura into a closed cyst or sac—will not such simply retain the self-substantial voluntary motion in themselves? will they not abandon the inferior cystic form, and represent the same, though but ideally and voluntarily? will not such a thorax open in front, like the intestine has opened at its nobler extremity?—will not such ribs be members, arms, digits? The members or limbs are the members of the trunk, or ribs that have opened in front; they are the thorax that has opened in front; and hence are nothing new, but only something emancipated or set free. Such ribs can be none other than motor organs; for they were previously nothing else. Then, however, they performed motion in the service of the viscera; at present, where they are absolved from this service, they execute it only in accordance to the will of the head, simply according to its will, for they are verily nothing more than motor ribs. Where, however, or in what region of the body will the ribs attain unto such freedom? Without doubt, in the neighbourhood of the head, and thus at the very spot where the lungs derive one of their extremities. The limbs are therefore cervical ribs.
2372. The arms are a thorax, consisting quite purely of bone and muscle, and represented as isolated or detached from the viscus, or the lung; on this depends their nobility, or, in other words, upon what is vegetative having been wholly left behind.
2373. The arms, when clasped together by the fingers, are a thorax without viscera, without heart and lungs; they are destined to inclose a whole body in the embrace.
2374. By an embrace that which is embraced has been made our viscus; it has been adopted as our animal heart, and as our animal vital organ—or lung. The embrace has an exalted physiological signification, and precisely that which it unconsciously possesses in the state of pure love. Nature always thinks more nobly than we do. We follow blindfold her beautiful regulations, and she rejoices in the sport.
2375. As the fundamental number of the branchiæ is five, so also must the limbs represent five ribs; they split into five digits or fingers. The feet of the Crustacea and Insects generally do not correspond to our feet; but to our fingers. The lower organized animals have only toes, no feet. The five thoracic feet of the crab correspond to our fingers; its five abdominal feet to our toes.
2376. There are three limbs in accordance with the three totalities of the body, truncal, sexual, and cephalic members, or arms, feet, and jaws.
2377. The members of the body or trunk belong to the thorax, because it is the respiratory system. The abdomen has no members; what have been so-called, are in their signification sexual limbs.
2378. Had the animal no sex, it would have no posterior limbs.
2379. As the three lower cervical and the two upper dorsal vertebræ belong to the arms, so also they appear to commence with five ribs, but then to become arrested, and again emerge to perfection in the digits.