Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/489

Rh 389). That the movement of the blood is also independent of the nervous system, at least of the cerebral nervous system, is shown by the fetus, which (according to Müller's Physiologie), without brain and spinal cord, has yet circulation of the blood. And Flourens also says: "Le mouvement du cœur, pris en soi, et abstraction faite de tout ce qui n'est pas essentiellement lui, comme sa durée, son énergie, ne dépend ni immédiatement, ni coinstantanément, du système nerveux central, et conséquemment c'est dans tout autre point de ce système que dans les centres nerveux eux-mêmes, qu'il faut chercher le principe primitif ct immédiat de ce mouvement" (Annales des sciences naturelles p. Audouin et Brougniard, 1828, vol. 13). Cuvier also says: "La circulation survit à la déstruction de tout l'encéphale et de toute la moëlle épiniaire (''Mém. de l'acad. d. sc., 1823, vol. 6; Hist. d. l'acad. p. Cuvier," p. cxxx). "Cor primum vivens et ultimum moriens," says Haller. The beating of the heart ceases at last in death. The blood has made the vessels themselves; for it appears in the ovum earlier than they do; they are only its path, voluntarily taken, then beaten smooth, and finally gradually condensed and closed up; as Kaspar Wolff has already taught: "Theorie der Generation," § 30-35. The motion of the heart also, which is inseparable from that of the blood, although occasioned by the necessity of sending blood into the lungs, is yet an original motion, for it is independent of the nervous system and of sensibility, as Burdach fully shows. "In the heart," he says, "appears with the maximum of irritability, a minimum of sensibility" (loc. cit.,'' § 769). The heart belongs to the muscular system as well as to the blood or vascular system; from which, however, it is clear that the two are closely related, indeed constitute one whole. Since now the metaphysical substratum of the force which moves the muscle, thus of irritability, is the will, the will must also be the metaphysical substratum of the force which lies at the foundation of the movement and the formations of the blood, as that by which the muscles are produced. The course of