Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

b. Functions of the Animal Senses.

2846. The objects of the animal senses are no longer matter, nor its chemical qualities, but the higher relations of the solar system, and the highest organizations, the animals themselves. Throughout the supra-planetary solar system there is naught to be conceived but motion and light in action. Wherever there is æther, it is in motion; the corresponding organs of sense must therefore perceive these two relations. Now, since the animal is also motion and light, and this alone, so by means of these senses will the innermost of animality be at once perceived. Animals become acquainted with themselves only through these senses, and by them only enter, in so far as they are animals, into communication with each other. In so far as they are mere masses of matter, they are capable of self-perception through other senses. These senses may therefore also be called cosmical, while the three former are terrestrial.

2847. They correspond thus with each other. The tactile sense is a precursor of the sense of motion, and represents the motion, gravity, and pressure, after a terrestrial manner; the two splanchnic senses are the precursors of the light-sense, since they dwell upon the qualities of the matter, while the light also is only a quality of the æther. The sense of smell, being as it were an air-sense, will in particular border most closely upon the light-sense.

2848. Through the two cosmic senses the universe is translated into the animal, like the planet is through the terrestrial senses; through the former also the animal spirit, which is a transcript of the universal spirit, passes over into other animals. They are the senses of the highest instruction, of freedom.

4. Function of the Auditory Sense.

In the æther resides the movement of the world.

2849. To the motor system that only which is its equal, and thus the movement of nature, can of necessity become an object. The motor system represented as a sense, cannot, however, perceive the borrowed or derived motion, not the planetary or massive motion, but the primary motion of the æther. The planetary motion is related to the primary motion as the oxydation is to the electrism, as chemical analysis to chemical affinity, and consequently also as respiration to smelling, as digestion to tasting, in short, as the material metatype to the spiritual antetype.

2850. The limbs are the planetary motion organized, and therefore perceive only this material motion—pressure. Touch is related to the animal sense of motion, as digestion is to the tasting.

2851. Smell and taste no longer perceive the bodies in the very act of decomposition, but their laws or their spiritual operations; so will the motor sense not perceive, like the sense of touch, the mass when in motion, but only the motor laws of the mass.

2852. These laws of motion are those of the primary motion. This is, however, a product of the light in the æther, an effect of polarity, and that indeed the first polarity which was manifested in the universe. The motor sense therefore perceives only a motion which has originated through primary polarity.