The Principles of Biology, Volume 2 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 2 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
So that throughout physiological development, as in evolution at large,
the multiplication of effects has been a factor constantly at work, and
working more actively as the development has advanced. The secondary
changes wrought by each primary change, have necessarily become more
numerous in proportion as organisms have become more complex. And
every increased multiplication of effects, further differentiating the
organism and, by consequence, further integrating it, has prepared the
way for still higher differentiations and integrations similarly caused.
§ 313. The general truth next to be resumed, is that these processes
have for their limit a state of equilibrium--proximately a moving
equilibrium and ultimately a complete equilibrium. The changes we have
contemplated are but the concomitants of a progressing equilibration.
In every aggregate which we call living, as well as in all other
aggregates, the instability of the homogeneous is but another name
for the absence of balance between the incident forces and the forces
which the aggregate opposes to them; and the passage into heterogeneity
is the passage towards a state of balance. And to say that in every
aggregate, organic or other, there goes on a multiplication of effects,
is but to say that one part which has a fresh force impressed on it,
must go on changing and communicating secondary changes, until the
whole of the impressed force has been used up in generating equivalent
reactive forces.
The principle that whatever new action an organism is subject to, must
either overthrow the moving equilibrium of its functions and cause the
sudden equilibration called death, or else must progressively alter the
organic rhythms until, by the establishment of a new reaction balancing
the new action a new moving equilibrium is produced, applies as much
to each member of an organism as to the organism in its totality. Any
force falling on any part not adapted to bear it, must either cause
local destruction of tissue, or must, without destroying the tissue,
continue to change it until it can change it no further; that is--until
the modified reaction of the part has become equal to the modified
action. Whatever the nature of the force this must happen. If it is a
mechanical force, then the immediate effect is some distortion of the
part--a distortion having for its limit that attitude in which the
resistance of the structures to further change of position, balances
the force tending to produce the further change; and the ultimate
effect, supposing the force to be continuous or recurrent, is such a
permanent alteration of form, or alteration of structure, or both, as
establishes a permanent balance. If the force is physico-chemical, or
chemical, the general result is still the same: the component molecules
of the tissue must have their molecular arrangements changed, and the
change in their molecular arrangements must go on until their molecular
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