朗讀練習-The Importance of Living, Chapter 2 part 4

IV. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW
The better knowledge of our own bodily functions and mental
processes gives us a truer and broader view of ourselves and takes
away from the word “animal” some of its old bad flavor. The old
proverb that “to understand is to forgive” is applicable to our own
bodily and mental processes. It may seem strange, but it is true, that
the very fact that we have a better understanding of our bodily
functions makes it impossible for us to look down upon them with
contempt. The important thing is not to say whether our digestive
process is noble or ignoble; the important thing is just to understand
it, and somehow it becomes extremely noble. This is true of every
biological function or process in our body, from perspiration and the
elimination of waste to the functions of the pancreatic juice, the gall,
the endocrine glands and the finer emotive and cogitative processes.
One no longer despises the kidney, one merely tries to understand it;
and one no longer looks upon a bad tooth as symbolic of the final
decay of our body and, a reminder to attend to the welfare of our
soul, but merely goes to a dentist, has it examined, explained and
properly fixed up. Somehow a man coming out from a dentist’s office
no longer despises his teeth, but has an increased respect for them
—because he is going to gnaw apples and chicken bones with
increased delight. As for the superfine metaphysician who says that
the teeth belong to the devil, and the Neo-Platonists who deny that
individual teeth exist, I always get a satirical delight in seeing a
philosopher suffering from a tooth-ache and an optimistic poet
suffering from dyspepsia. Why doesn’t he go on with his philosophic
disquisitions, and why does he hold his hand against his cheek, just
as you or I or the woman in the next house would do? And why does
optimism seem so unconvincing to a dyspeptic poet? Why doesn’t
he sing any more? How ungrateful it is, of him, therefore, to forget
the intestines and sing about the spirit when the intestines behave
and give him no trouble!
Science, if anything, has taught us an increased respect for our
body, by deepening a sense of the wonder and mystery of its
workings. In the first place, genetically, we begin to understand how
we came about, and see that, instead of being made out of clay, we
are sitting on the top of the genealogical tree of the animal kingdom.
That must be a fine sensation, sufficiently satisfying for any man who
is not intoxicated with his own spirit. Not that I believe dinosaurs
lived and died millions of years ago in order that we today might walk
erect with our two legs upon this earth. Without such gratuitous
assumptions, biology has not at all destroyed a whit of human
dignity, or cast doubt upon the view that we are probably the most
splendid animals ever evolved on this earth. So that is quite
satisfying for any man who wants to insist on human dignity, In the
second place, we are more impressed than ever with the mystery
and beauty of the body. The workings of the internal parts of our
body and the wonderful correlation between them compel in us a
sense of the extreme difficulty with which these correlations are
brought about and the extreme simplicity and finality with which they
are nevertheless accomplished. Instead of simplifying these internal
chemical processes by explaining them, science makes them all the
more difficult to explain. These processes are incredibly more difficult
than the layman without any knowledge of physiology usually
imagines. The great mystery of the universe without is similar in
quality to the mystery of the universe within.
The more a physiologist tries to analyze and study the biophysical
and bio-chemical processes of human physiology, the more
his wonder increases. That is so to the extent that sometimes it
compels a physiologist with a broad spirit to accept the mystic’s view
of life, as in the case of Dr. Alexis Carrel. Whether we agree with him
or not, as he states his opinions in Man, the Unknown, we must
agree with him that the facts are there, unexplained and
unexplainable. We begin to acquire a sense of the intelligence of
matter itself:
The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the
nervous system. Each element of the body adjusts itself to the
others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation is
essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an
intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and
vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate
together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of
finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to
know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts
accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the
same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the
remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present.
And we should wonder, for instance, and be extremely amazed that
our intestines heal their own wounds, entirely without our voluntary
effort:
The wounded loop first becomes immobile. It is temporarily
paralyzed, and fecal matter is thus prevented from running
into the abdomen. At the same time, some other intestinal
loop, or the surface of the omentum, approaches the wound
and, owing to a known property of peritoneum, adheres to it.
Within four or five hours the opening is occluded. Even if the
surgeon’s needle has drawn the edges of the wound together,
healing is due to spontaneous adhesion of the peritoneal
surfaces.
Why do we despise the body, when the flesh itself shows such
intelligence? After all, we are endowed with a body, which is a selfnourishing,
self-regulating, self-repairing, self-starting and selfreproducing
machine, installed at birth and lasting like a good
grandfather clock for three-quarters of a century, requiring very little
attention. It is a machine provided with wireless vision and wireless
hearing, with a more highly complicated system of nerves and
lymphs than the most complicated telephone and telegraph system
of the world. It has a system of filing reports done by a vast
complexus of nerves, managed with such efficiency that some files,
the less important ones, are kept in the attic and others are kept in a
more convenient desk, but those kept in the attic, which may be
thirty years old and rarely referred to, are nevertheless there and
sometimes can be found with lightning speed and efficiency. Then it
also manages to go about like a motor car with perfect knee-action
and absolute silence of engines, and if the motor car has an accident
and breaks its glass or its steering wheel, the car automatically
exudes or manufactures a substance to replace the glass and does
its best to grow a steering wheel, or at least manages to do the
steering with a swollen end of the steering shaft; for we must
remember that when one of our kidneys is cut out, the other kidney
swells and increases its function to insure the passage of the normal
volume of urine. Then it also keeps up a normal temperature within a
tenth of a Fahrenheit degree, and manufactures its own chemicals
for the processes of transforming food into living tissues.
Above all, it has a sense of the rhythm of life, and a sense of time,
not only of hours and days, but also of decades; the body regulates
its own childhood, puberty and maturity, stops growing when it
should no longer grow, and brings forth a wisdom tooth at a time
when no one of us ever thought of it. Our conscious wisdom has
nothing to do with our wisdom tooth. It also manufactures specific
antidotes against poison, on the whole with amazing success, and it
does all these things with absolute silence, without the usual racket
of a factory, so that our superfine metaphysician may not be
disturbed and is free to think about his spirit or his essence.

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