The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
tissue, elastic tissue, connective tissue, osseous tissue, muscular tissue,
nervous tissue, glandular tissue. Once more, physiology in its concrete
interpretations recognizes special functions as the ends of special
organs--regards the teeth as having the office of mastication; the heart as
an apparatus to propel blood; this gland as fitted to produce one requisite
secretion and that to produce another; each muscle as the agent of a
particular motion; each nerve as the vehicle of a special sensation or a
special motor impulse.
It is clear that dealing with Biology only in its larger aspects,
specialities of function do not concern us; except in so far as they serve
to illustrate, or to qualify, its generalities.
§ 57. The first induction to be here set down is a familiar and obvious
one; the induction, namely, that complexity of function is the correlative
of complexity of structure. The leading aspects of this truth must be
briefly noted.
Where there are no distinctions of structure there are no distinctions of
function. A Rhizopod will serve as an illustration. From the outside of
this creature, which has not even a limiting membrane, there are protruded
numerous processes. Originating from any point of the surface, each of
these may contract again and disappear, or it may touch some fragment of
nutriment which it draws with it, when contracting, into the general
mass--thus serving as hand and mouth; or it may come in contact with its
fellow-processes at a distance from the body and become confluent with
them; or it may attach itself to an adjacent fixed object, and help by its
contraction to draw the body into a new position. In brief, this speck of
animated jelly is at once all stomach, all skin, all mouth, all limb, and
doubtless, too, all lung. In organisms having a fixed distribution of parts
there is a concomitant fixed distribution of actions. Among plants we see
that when, instead of a uniform tissue like that of many _Algæ_, everywhere
devoted to the same process of assimilation, there arise, as in the higher
plants, root and stem and leaves, there arise correspondingly unlike
processes. Still more conspicuously among animals do there result varieties
of function when the originally homogeneous mass is replaced by
heterogeneous organs; since, both singly and by their combinations,
modified parts generate modified changes. Up to the highest organic types
this dependence continues manifest; and it may be traced not only under
this most general form, but also under the more special form that in
animals having one set of functions developed to more than usual
heterogeneity there is a correspondingly heterogeneous apparatus devoted to
them. Thus among birds, which have more varied locomotive powers than
mammals, the limbs are more widely differentiated; while the higher
mammals, which rise to more numerous and more involved adjustments of inner
to outer relations than birds, have more complex nervous systems.
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