man without any
knowledge of physiology usually imagines. The great mystery of the universe without
is similar in quality to the mystery of the universe within.
The more a physiologist tries to analyze and study the bio-physical and bio-chemical
processes of human physiology, the more his wonder increases. That is so to the extent
that sometimes it compels a physiologist with a broad spirit to accept the mystic's
view of life, as in the case of Dr. Alexis Carrel. Whether we agree with him or not,
as he states his opinions in Man, the Unknown, we must agree with him that the facts
are there, unexplained and unexplainable. We begin to acquire a sense of the
intelligence of matter itself:
The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the nervous system. Each element
of the body adjusts itself to the others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation
is essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an intelligence of the same
kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to
associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within
the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of
the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same
for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near,
the future as well as the present.
And we should wonder, for instance, and be extremely amazed that our intestines heal
their own wounds, entirely without our voluntary effort:
The wounded loop first becomes immobile. It is temporarily paralyzed, and fecal matter
is thus prevented from running into the abdomen. At the same time, some other
intestinal loop, or the surface of the omentum, approaches the wound and, owing to
a known property of peritoneum, adheres to it. Within four or five hours the opening
is occluded. Even if the surgeon's needle has drawn the edges of the wound together,
healing is due to spontaneous adhesion of the peritoneal surfaces.
Why do we despise the body, when the flesh itself shows such intelligence? After all,
we are endowed with a body, which is a selfnour-ishing, self-regulating, self-
repairing, self-starting and selfrepro-ducing machine, installed at birth and
lasting like a good grandfather clock for three-quarters of a century, requiring very
little attention. It is a machine provided with wireless vision and wireless hearing,
with a more highly complicated system of nerves and lymphs than the most complicated
telephone and telegraph system of the world. It has a system of filing reports done
by a vast complexus of nerves, managed with such efficiency that some files, the less
important ones, are kept in the attic and others are kept in a more convenient desk,
but those kept in the attic, which may be thirty years old and rarely referred to,=本=作=品=由==網=提=供=下=載=與=在=線=閱=讀=
are nevertheless there and sometimes can be found with lightning speed and efficiency.
Then it also manages to go about like a motor car with perfect knee-action and absolute
silence of engines, and if the motor car has an accident and breaks its glass or its
steering wheel, the car automatically exudes or manufactures a substance to replace
the glass and does its best to grow a steering wheel, or at least manages to do the
steering with a swollen end of the steering shaft; for we must remember that when
one of our kidneys is cut out, the other kidney swells and increases its function
to insure the passage of the normal volume of urine. Then it also keeps up a normal
temperature within a tenth of a Fahrenheit degree, and manufactures its own chemicals
for the processes of transforming food into living tissues.
Above all, it has a sense of the rhythm of life, and a sense of time, not only of
hours and days, but also of decades; the body regulates its own childhood, puberty
and maturity, stops growing when it should no longer grow, and brings forth a wisdom
too