Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/281

 PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 249

notice with particular pleasure in the theses sustained by Dr. Von Sigriz on taking his degree at Munich (August, 1835), which commence as follows: 1. Sanguis est determinans formam organismi se evolventis. 2. Evolutio organica determinatur vitae internae actione et voluntate. [It is the blood that determines the form of the self–developing organism. Organic development is determined by the activity of the internal life and by the will.]

Lastly, a very remarkable and unexpected corroboration of this part of my doctrine has to be mentioned, which has recently been communicated from ancient Hindoo philosophy by Colebrooke. In his exposition of the philosophical schools of the Hindoos, 1 he quotes the following as the doctrine of the Nyaga school: "Volition, Yatna, effort or manifestation of the Will, is a self-determination to act which gives satisfaction. Desire is its occasion, perception its motive. Two kinds of perceptible effort of the will are distinguished: that which springs from desire which seeks the agreeable, and that which springs from aversion which shuns the repulsive. Another species, which escapes sensation and perception, but is inferred from analogy of spontaneous acts, comprises animal functions, having for a cause the vital, unseen power." Here the words "animal functions" are evidently used, not in a physiological, but in a popular sense: so that here organic life is unquestionably derived from the will. We find a similar statement in Colebrooke's Report on the Vedas 2 where he says: "Asu is unconscious volition, which occasions an act necessary to the support of life, as breathing, etc."

Moreover my reduction of vital energy to the will by no means interferes with the old division of its functions into reproductive force, irritability and sensibility. This division remains a deep view of their difference, and gives occasion for interesting observations.

The faculty of reproduction, objectified in the cellular tissue of plants, constitutes the chief characteristic of

1 Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain, 1824, p. 110. 2 Asiatic Researches, Vol. 8, p. 426.