Form and Function Part 4

[28] _Loc. cit._, p. 382.

[29] Tome xiv., pp. 311-374.

[30] Tome xiv., p. 358.

[31] See also "Oiseaux," Tome i., pp. 394, 395. Pallas in 1766 adopted for the whole animal kingdom this branching arrangement.

[32] "But this cannot be, for it is certain by revelation that all animals have equally partic.i.p.ated in the grace of creation."

[33] iv., p. 385.

[34] iv., pp. 3-110.

[35] It has been revived in our own days by Bergson, _Matiere et Memoire_, p. 57.

[36] iv., pp. 7-15.

[37] _Anatomie Generale_, Paris, 1801, Eng. trans. 1824.

[38] _Anatomie Generale_, Eng. trans., i., p. lii.

[39] _Anatomie Generale_, Eng. trans., i., p. lviii.

[40] _Loc cit._, i., sect. vii.

CHAPTER III

CUVIER

Cuvier was perhaps the greatest of comparative anatomists; his work is, in the best sense of the word, cla.s.sical.

Like all his predecessors, like Aristotle, like the Italian anatomists, Cuvier studied structure and function together, even gave function the primacy.

Some functions, he says,[41] are common to all organised bodies--origin by generation, growth by nutrition, end by death. There are also secondary functions. Of these the most important, in animals at least, are the faculties of feeling and moving. These two faculties are necessarily bound up together; if Nature has given animals sensation she must also have given them the power of movement, the power to flee from what is harmful and draw near to what is good. These two faculties determine all the others. A creature that feels and moves requires a stomach to carry food in. Food requires instruments to divide it, liquids to digest it. Plants, which do not feel and do not move, have no need of a stomach, but have roots instead. Thus the "Animal Functions" of feeling and moving determine the character of the organs of the second order, the organs of digestion. These in their turn are prior to the organs of circulation, which are a means to the end of distributing the nutrient fluid or blood to all parts of the body. These organs of the third order are not only dependent on those of the second order, but are also not even necessary, for many animals are without them. Only animals with a circulatory system can have definite breathing organs--lungs or gills. Plants, and animals without a circulation, breathe by their whole surface.

There is accordingly a rational order of functions, and therefore of the systems of organs which perform them. The most important are the Animal Functions, with their great organ-system, the neuro-muscular mechanism. Then come the digestive functions, and after them, and in a sense accessory to them, the functions and organs of circulation and respiration. The last three may be grouped as the Vital Functions.

The Animal Functions not only determine the character of the Vital Functions, but influence also the primary faculty of generation, for animals' power of movement has rendered their mode of fecundation more simple, has therefore had an effect on their organs of generation.

This division into "Animal" and "Vital" functions recalls Buffon's and Bichat's distinction of the "animal" and the "vegetative" lives.

Cuvier apparently took this idea from Buffon, for he says that a plant is an animal that sleeps.[42] But the idea is as old as Aristotle, who discusses the "sleep" of embryos and of plants in the last book of the _De Generatione animalium_. The distinction between animal and vegetative life is, of course, based for Aristotle in the difference between the [Greek: psyche aisthetike] and the [Greek: psyche threptike]. Cuvier, like Aristotle, Buffon, and Bichat, makes the heart the centre of the "vegetative" organs.

It is important to note that Cuvier puts function before structure, and infers from function what the organ will be. "Plants," he writes, "having few faculties, have a very simple organisation."[43] It is only after having discussed and cla.s.sified functions that Cuvier goes on to examine organs.

First his views on the composition of the animal body. Aristotle distinguished three degrees of composition--the "elements," the h.o.m.ogeneous parts, and the heterogeneous parts or organs. Cuvier does the same. Some small advance has been made in the two thousand years'

interval, due in the first place to the progress of chemistry, and in the second to the invention of the microscope. To the first circ.u.mstance Cuvier owes his knowledge that the inorganic substances forming the first degree of composition are princ.i.p.ally C, N, H, O, and P, combined to form alb.u.men, fibrine, and the like, which are in their turn combined to form the solids and fluids of the body. To the latter circ.u.mstance Cuvier owes the statement that the finest fragments into which mechanical division can resolve the organism are little flakes and filaments, which, joined up loosely together, form a "cellulosity." The discovery of the true cellular nature of animal tissues did not come till much later, till some years after Cuvier's death in 1832. Knowledge of histological detail was, however, considerable by the beginning of the 19th century. Cuvier knew, for example, that each muscle fibre has its own nerve fibre. But he gives no elaborate account of the h.o.m.ogeneous parts, no detailed histology.

On the other hand his treatment of the heterogeneous parts or organs is detailed and masterly.[44]

The main systems of organs are, in order of importance, the nervous and muscular, the digestive, the circulatory, and the respiratory.

Each organ or system of organs may have many forms. If any form of any organ could exist in combination with any form of all the others there would be an enormous number of combinations theoretically possible.

But these combinations do not all exist in Nature, for organs are not merely a.s.sembled (_rapproche's_), but act upon one another, and act all together for a common end. Accordingly only the combinations that fulfil these conditions exist in Nature. Cuvier thus dismisses the question of a science of possible organic forms and considers only the forms or combinations actually existing. This question of the possibility of a "theoretical" morphology of living things, after the fashion of the morphology of crystals with their sixteen possible types, was raised in later years by K. G. Carus, Bronn, and Haeckel.

Organisms, then, are harmonious combinations of organs, and the harmony is primarily a harmony of functions. Every function depends upon every other, and all are necessary. The harmony of organs and their mutual dependence are the results of the interdependence of function. This thought, the recognition of the functional unity of the organism, is the fundamental one at the base of all Cuvier's work.

Before him men had recognised more or less clearly the harmony of structure and function, and had based much of their work upon this una.n.a.lysed a.s.sumption. Cuvier was the first naturalist to raise this thought to the level of a principle peculiar to natural history. "It is on this mutual dependence of the functions and the a.s.sistance which they lend one to another that are founded the laws that determine the relations of their organs; these laws are as inevitable as the laws of metaphysics and mathematics, for it is evident that a proper harmony between organs that act one upon another is a necessary condition of the existence of the being to which they belong."[45]

This rational principle, peculiar to natural history, Cuvier calls the principle of the conditions of existence, for the following reason:--"Since nothing can exist that does not fulfil the conditions which render its existence possible, the different parts of each being must be co-ordinated in such a way as to render possible the existence of the being as a whole, not only in itself, but also in its relations with other beings, and the a.n.a.lysis of these conditions often leads to general laws which are as certain as those which are derived from calculation or from experiment."[46]

By "conditions of existence" he means something quite different from what is now commonly understood. The idea of the external conditions of existence, the environment, enters very little into his thought. He is intent on the adaptations of function and organ within the living creature--a point of view rather neglected nowadays, but essential for the understanding of living things. The very condition of existence of a living thing, and part of the essential definition of it, is that its parts work together for the good of the whole.

The principle of the adaptedness of parts may be used as an explanatory principle, enabling the naturalist to trace out in detail the interdependence of functions and their organs. When you have discovered how one organ is adapted to another and to the whole, you have gone a certain way towards understanding it. That is using teleology as a regulative principle, in Kant's sense of the word.

Cuvier was indeed a teleologist after the fashion of Kant, and there can be no doubt that he was influenced, at least in the exposition of his ideas, by Kant's _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_, which appeared ten years before the publication of the _Lecons d'Anatomie Comparee_.

Teleology in Kant's sense is and will always be a necessary postulate of biology. It does not supply an explanation of organic forms and activities, but without it one cannot even begin to understand living things. Adaptedness is the most general fact of life, and innumerable lesser facts can be grouped as particular cases of it, can be, so far, understood.

Cuvier's famous principle of correlation, the corner-stone of his work, is simply the practical application to the facts of structure of the principle of functional adaptedness. By the principle of correlation, from one part of an animal, given sufficient knowledge of the structure of its like, you can in a general way construct the whole. "This must necessarily be so: for all the organs of an animal form a single system, the parts of which hang together, and act and re-act upon one another; and no modifications can appear in one part without bringing about corresponding modifications in all the rest."[47] The logical basis of the principle is sound. The functions of the parts are all intimately bound up with one another, and one function cannot vary without bringing in its train corresponding modifications in the others. Structure and function are bound up together; every modification of a function entails therefore the modification of an organ. Hence from the shape of one organ you can infer the shape of the other organs--if you have sufficiently extensive empirical knowledge of functions, and of the relation of structure to function in each kind of organ. Given an alimentary ca.n.a.l capable of digesting only flesh, and possessing therefore a certain form, you know that the other functions must be adapted to this particular function of the alimentary ca.n.a.l. The animal must have keen sight, fine smell, speed, agility, and strength in paws and jaws.

These particular functions must have correspondingly modified organs, well-developed eyes and ears, claws and teeth. Further, you know from experience that such and such definitely modified organs are invariably found with the carnivorous habit, carna.s.sial teeth, for example, and reduced clavicles. From a "carnivorous" alimentary ca.n.a.l, then, you can infer with certainty that the animal possessed carna.s.sial teeth and the other structural peculiarities of carnivorous animals, _e.g._, the peculiar coronoid process of the mandible. From the carna.s.sial tooth you can infer the reduced clavicle, and so on.

"In a word, the form of the tooth implies the form of the condyle; that of the shoulder blade that of the claws, just as the equation of a curve implies all its properties."[48]

Similarly the great respiratory power of birds is correlated with their great muscular strength, and renders necessary great digestive powers. Hence the correlated structure of lungs, muscles and their attachments, and alimentary ca.n.a.l, in birds.

Not only do systems of organs, by being adjusted to special modifications of function, influence one another, but so also do parts of the same organ. This is noticeably the case with the skeleton, where hardly a facet can vary without the others varying proportionately, so that from one bone you can up to a certain point deduce all the rest.

We deduce the necessity, the constancy, of these co-existences of organs from the observed reciprocal influence of their functions. That being established, we can argue from observed constancy of relation between two organs an action of one upon the other, and so be led to a discovery of their functions. But even if we do not discover the functional interdependencies of the parts, we can use the established fact of the constant co-existence of two parts as proof of a functional correlation between them.

Correlation is either a rational or an empirical principle, according as we know or do not know the interdependence of function of which it is the expression. Even when we apply the rational principle of correlation it would be useless in our hands if we had not extensive empirical knowledge; when we use an empirical rule of correlation we depend entirely upon observation. "There are a great many cases,"

writes Cuvier,[49] "where our theoretical knowledge of the relations of forms would not suffice, if it were not filled out by observation,"

that is to say, there are many cases of correlation not yet explicable in terms of function. From a hoof you can deduce the main characters of herbivores (with a certain amount of a.s.sistance from your empirical knowledge of herbivores), but could you from a cloven hoof deduce that the animal is a ruminant, unless you had observed the constancy of relation, not directly explicable in terms of function, between cloven hoofs and chewing the cud? Or could you deduce from the existence of frontal horns that the animal ruminates? "Nevertheless, since these relations are constant, they must necessarily have a sufficient cause; but as we are ignorant of this cause, observation must supplement theory; observation establishes empirical laws which become almost as certain as the rational laws, when they are based upon a sufficient number of observations.... But that there exist all the same hidden reasons for all these relations is partly revealed by observation itself, independently of general philosophy."[50] That is to say, even correlations for which no explanation in terms of function can be supplied are probably in reality functional correlations. This may, in some cases, be inferred from the graded correspondence of two sets of organs. For example, ungulates which do not ruminate, and have not a cloven hoof, have a more perfect dent.i.tion and more bones in the foot than the true cloven-hoofed ruminants. There is a correlation between the state of development of the teeth and of the foot. This correlation is a graded one, for camels, which have a more perfect dent.i.tion than other ruminants, have also a bone more in their tarsus.

It seems probable, therefore, that there is some reason, that is, some explanation in terms of function, for this case of correlation.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that many correlations are not explicable in terms of function, and the subst.i.tution of correlation as an empirical principle for correlation as a rational principle marks for Cuvier a step away from his functional comparative anatomy towards a pure morphology. It is significant that in later times the term correlation has come to be applied more especially to the purely empirical constancies of relation, and has lost most of its functional significance. But the correlation of the parts of an organism is no mere mathematical concept, to be expressed by a coefficient, but something deeper and more vital.

Cuvier interpreted the functional dependence of the parts in terms of what we now call the general metabolism. He had a clear vision of the constant movement of molecules in the living tissue, combining and recombining, of the organism taking in and intercalating molecules from outside from the food and rejecting molecules in the excretions, a ceaseless _tourbillon vital_. "This general movement, universal in every part, is so unmistakably the very essence of life that parts separated from a living body straightway die."[51] The organisation of the body, the arrangement of its solids and liquids, is adapted to further the _tourbillon vital_. "Each part contributes to this general movement its own particular action and is affected by it in particular ways, with the result that, in every being, life is a unity which results from the mutual action and reaction of all its parts."[52]

Cuvier, however, did not resolve life into metabolism, nor reduce vital happenings to the chemical level. The form of organised bodies is more essential than the matter of which they are composed, for the matter changes ceaselessly while the form remains unchanged. It is in form that we must seek the differences between species, and not in the combinations of matter, which are almost the same in all.[53] The differences are to be sought at the level of the second and third degrees of composition.

The existence of differences of form introduces a new problem, the problem of diversity. There are only a few possible combinations of the princ.i.p.al organs, but as you get down to less important parts the possible scope of variation is greatly increased, and most of the possible variations do exist. Nature seems prodigal of form, of form which needs not to be useful in order to exist. "It needs only to be possible, _i.e._, of such a character that it does not, destroy the harmony of the whole."[54] We seize here the relation of the principle of the adaptedness of parts to the problem of the variety of form. The former is in a sense a regulative and conservative principle which lays down limits beyond which variation may not stray. In itself it is not a fountain of change; there must be another cause of change. This thought is of great importance for theories of descent.

Cuvier has no theory to account for the variety of form: he contents himself with a cla.s.sification. There are two main ways of cla.s.sifying forms; you may cla.s.sify according to single organs or according to the totality of organs. By the first method you can have as many cla.s.sifications as you have organs, and the cla.s.sifications will not necessarily coincide. Thus you can divide animals according to their organs of digestion into two cla.s.ses, those in which the alimentary ca.n.a.l is a sac with one opening (zoophytes) and those in which the ca.n.a.l has two openings,[55] a curious forestalment, in the rough, of the modern division of Metazoa into Coelentera and Coelomata.

It is only by taking single organs that you can arrange animals into long series, and you will have as many series as you take organs. Only in this way can you form any _ech.e.l.le des etres_ or graded series; and you can get even this kind of gradation only within each of the big groups formed on a common plan of structure; you can never grade, for example, from Invertebrates to Vertebrates through intermediate forms[56] (which is perfectly true, in spite of Amphioxus and Balanoglossus!).

In the _Regne Animal_ Cuvier restricts the application of the idea of the _ech.e.l.le_ within even narrower limits, refusing to admit its validity within the bounds of the vertebrate phylum, or even within the vertebrate cla.s.ses. This seems, however, to refer to a seriation of whole organisms and not of organs, so that the possibility of a seriation of organs within a cla.s.s is not denied. Cuvier was, above all, a positive spirit, and he looked askance at all speculation which went beyond the facts. "The pretended scale of beings," he wrote, "is only an erroneous application to the totality of creation of partial observations, which have validity only when confined to the sphere within which they were made."[57] This remark, which is after all only just, perfectly expresses Cuvier's att.i.tude to the transcendental theories, and was probably a protest against the sweeping generalisations of his colleague, Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire.

A true cla.s.sification should be based upon the comparison of all organs, but all organs are not of equal value for cla.s.sification, nor are all the variations of each organ equally important. In estimating the value of variations more stress should be laid on function than on form, for only those variations are important which affect the mode of functioning. These are the principles on which Cuvier bases the cla.s.sification of animals given in the _Lecons_, Article V., "Division des animaux d'apres l'ensemble de leur organisation." The scheme of cla.s.sification actually given in the _Lecons_ recalls curiously that of Aristotle, for there is the same broad division into Vertebrates, with red blood, and Invertebrates, almost all with white blood. Nine cla.s.ses altogether are distinguished--Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, Molluscs, Crustacea, Insects, Worms, Zoophytes (including Echinoderms and Coelenterates).

A maturer theory and practice of cla.s.sification is given in the _Regne Animal_ of seventeen years later. Here the principle of the subordination of characters (which seems to have been first explicitly stated by the younger de Jussieu in his _Genera Plantarum_, 1789,[58]) is more clearly recognised. The properties or peculiarities of structure which have the greatest number of relations of incompatibility and coexistence, and therefore influence the whole in the greatest degree, are the important or dominating characters, to which the others must be subordinated in cla.s.sification. These dominant characters are also the most constant.[59] In deciding which characters are the most important Cuvier makes use of his fundamental cla.s.sification of functions and organs into two main sets. "The heart and the organs of circulation are a kind of centre for the vegetative functions, as the brain and the spinal cord are for the animal functions."[60] These two organ-systems vary in harmony, and their characters must form the basis for the delimitation of the great groups. Judged by this standard there are four princ.i.p.al types of form,[61] of which all the others are but modifications. These four types are Vertebrates, Molluscs, Articulates, and Radiates. The first three have bilateral, the last has radial symmetry. Vertebrates and Molluscs have blood-vessels, but Articulates show a functional transition from the blood-vessel to the tracheal system. Radiates approach the h.o.m.ogeneity of plants; they appear to lack a distinct nervous system and sense organs, and the lowest of them show only a h.o.m.ogeneous pulp which is mobile and sensitive. All four cla.s.ses are princ.i.p.ally distinguished from one another by the broad structural relations of their neuromuscular system, of the organs of the animal functions. Vertebrates have a spinal cord and brain, an internal skeleton built on a definite plan, with an axis and appendages; in Molluscs the muscles are attached to the skin and the sh.e.l.l, and the nervous system consists of separate ma.s.ses; Articulates have a hard external skeleton and jointed limbs, and their nervous system consists of two long ventral cords; Radiates have ill-defined nervous and muscular systems, and in their lowest forms possess the animal functions without the animal organs.