In all of these phenomena there is something more than brain cells at work. Brain cells are guided, co-ordinated, controlled, and even overseen, in their labors. The same conclusion becomes inevitable with regard to the action of the cells of the body generally. A generation or two ago it was the custom to attempt to explain all the processes in the body by chemical and physical principles. Respiration, for instance, and absorption of gases into the blood in the lungs and the expiration of gases that have been generated within the body during vital processes, were supposed to be entirely explicable on the principle of the diffusion of gases. The absorption of various substances into the body proper from the intestinal tract, and the excretion {132} of various substances from within the body into the excretory organs, as well as the process of secretion, were supposed to be nothing more than varying phenomena of osmosis and exosmosis. There has since been a general recognition of the fact that these principles do not explain many of the incidents within the body in its relations to its surroundings, and that vital processes are something much more than merely manifestations of physics and chemistry.

The lungs are not mere laboratories in which refinements of the laws of the diffusion of gases may be studied, for under varying pressures from without that would vitiate the ordinary laws of diffusion, inspiration and expiration continues. Fishes live at depths where the pressure is so great that expiration would seem to be impossible, yet they succeed in eliminating harmful gaseous material. Prof. Haldane of Cambridge has called attention to many of these processes. Animal stomachs are not test-tubes. Animal excretion, and above all, secretion, is carried on sometimes in accordance with but, almost more often, in defiance of chemical and physical principles. The individual, even in the lower animals, counts for much more than the chemical constituents of the tissues and the physical principles involved.

Besides, all the parts of the organism are co-ordinated, and there are wonderful checks and counterchecks which show that animals are much more than colonies of cells fortuitously growing together and habituated to such common life by many generations of heredity and environment and training. In a word, the old vitalistic principle has become popular once more and even great physiologists have insisted that there is a principle of life which guides and controls and co-ordinates the different portions of the body. Especially does this seem to be true of the brain. We have here an intensely complex machine, composed literally of billions of parts which work together, and in doing so accomplish wonderful results. Of the existence of this machine, much more of the great intricacy of its parts and mechanism, we are quite unconscious. We learn to use it in very early years with an assurance and a perfection that is amazing, considering how complex it is. The less we think about it and its workings, the better does it work and the less disturbance of function is there in its accomplishment.

Fig. 21.—SECTION THROUGH THE CORTEX OF THE GYRUS OCCIPITALIS SUPERIOR. (Hammarberg. Barker.)

If a vitalistic principle were needed to enable us to understand the workings of the ordinary body cells, how much more is it required for the workings of brain cells. There is something behind that guides and rules the brain, and through which it accomplishes its work. It is this that brings about an unconscious cerebration accomplishing intellectual results for us even when the brain machine itself is at rest as when asleep, or fails, for some reason, to be in readiness to take up the work that we demand of it. It is this vital principle that coordinates the movements of brain cells which represent {133} the physical processes underlying memory and the nervous elements of the sensitive and motor phenomena of the organism. Reflection on the physical mechanism underlying mental operations of various kinds, demands the vitalistic explanation much more than the physiological phenomena which have converted physiologists to the old way of thinking in our time. Our individuality is probably largely due to the physical basis of our mentality, but there is something more than that required for any theory of mental operations that would satisfy all the questions that come to us. There is, then, actual proof of the existence of a force that is part of us, that constitutes a bit of the essence of our personalities, yet is capable of accomplishing results that we cannot understand, and of managing a machine that transcends any physical powers that we can think of.

FIG. 22—MOTOR CELL OF VENTRAL HORN OF SPINAL CORD FROM THE HUMAN FETUS, THIRTY CENTIMETERS LONG (method of Golgi; after von Lenhossek. Barker.)

This vital force behind the nervous system contains stores of energy that can be called on for therapeutic purposes. It is the directing, co-ordinating and energizing force which controls the central nervous system, and enables it to accomplish its purposes. It is the disappearance of this force at death which leaves the body without vital activity, though no physical difference between the dead and the living body can be demonstrated. Changes in the body follow death; they are not simultaneous. This vital force supplies the energy that we call the will, and underlies the process called "living on the will" which so often serves to maintain existence when there is every reason to think that a fatal termination is due. The amount of energy thus available is limited, {134} but is much more powerful than has been thought. It is of the greatest possible service in preserving health and eliminating disease. Its existence, demonstrated by the complex nervous system which we employ with such confidence, though we know nothing of it, furnishes the best possible basis for confident attempts at rousing the patient to use the vital energy he possesses for the strengthening of weakness, the correction of deficiency and the control of evil tendencies.