§ 4 The Individuality of Complex Beings. Law of the Constitution of Organisms
Individuality of Complex Beings.—From the cellular doctrine follows a remarkably suggestive conception of living beings. The metazoa and the metaphytes—that is to say, the multicellular living beings which may be seen with the eyes and do not require the microscope to reveal them—are an assemblage of anatomical elements and the posterity of a cell. The animal or the plant, instead of being an individual unity, is a “multitude,” a term which is used by Goëthe himself when pondering, in 1807, over the doctrine taught by Bichat; or, according to the equally correct expression of Hegel, it is a “nation”; it springs from a common cellular ancestor, just as the Jewish people sprang from the loins of Abraham.
We now picture to ourselves the complex living being, animal or plant, with its configuration which distinguishes it from every other being, just as a populous city is distinguished by a thousand characteristics from its neighbour. The elements of this city are independent and autonomous for the same reason as the anatomical elements of the organism. Both have in themselves the means of life, which they neither borrow nor take from their neighbours nor from the whole. All these inhabitants live in the same way, are nourished and breathe in the same manner, all possessing the same general faculties, those of man; but each has besides, his profession, his trade, his aptitudes, his talents, by which he contributes to social life, and by which in his turn he depends on it. Professional men, the mason, the baker, the butcher, the manufacturer, the artist, carry out different tasks and furnish different products, the more varied, the more numerous and the more differentiated, in proportion as the social state has reached a higher degree of perfection. The living being, animal or plant, is a city of this kind.
Law of the Constitution of Organisms.—Such is the complex animal. It is organized like the city. But the higher law of this city is that the conditions of the elementary or individual life of all the anatomical citizens are respected, the conditions being the same for all. Food, air, and light must be brought everywhere to each sedentary element; the waste must be carried off in discharges which will free the whole from the inconvenience or the danger of such debris; and that is why we have the different forms of apparatus in the circulatory, respiratory, and excretory economy. The organization of the whole is therefore dominated by the necessities of cellular life. This is expressed in the law of the constitution of organisms formulated by Claude Bernard. The organic edifice is made up of apparatus and organs, which furnish to each anatomical element the necessary conditions and materials for the maintenance of life and the exercise of its activity. We now understand what is the life, and at the same time what is the death, of a complex being. The life of the complex animal, of the metazoon, is of two degrees; at the foundation, the activity proper to each cell, elementary life, cellular life; above, the forms of activity resulting from the association of the cells, the life of the whole, the sum or rather the complex of elementary partial lives. There is a solidarity between them produced by the nervous system, by the community of the general circulatory, respiratory apparatus, etc., and by the free communication and mixture of the liquids which constitute the media of culture for each cell. We shall have an opportunity of recurring to current ideas as to the morphological constitution of organisms.