The psychic life of micro-organisms Author:Alfred Binet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: formed of a vesicle, the centre of which is occupied by a refracting globule; they are called the vesicles of Miiller, after Johannes Miiller, who discovered the... more »m. The auditory organs which have been observed in Worms and the Ccelenterata are apparently composed of a vesiculiform capsule enclosing a solid concretion, called otolith. Thus it is possible that the vesicles of Miiller may be auditory vesicles. Up to the present time this organ has not been met with in any other species of Protozoa. NUTRITION. After studying the organs, let us pass to a study of their functions. It is not our intention to devote special chapters to irritability, instinct, memory, reasoning, and thepowers of volition in Micro-organisms. This would lead to diffuseness of treatment. Our method will be quite different. We shall describe as a whole all the different manifestations of psychical activity attendant upon the actions of Micro-organisms in the exercise of the important functions of their existence. The present chapter will be devoted to psychical phenomena connected with the act of nutrition. All living matter possesses the power of continually increasing its mass by the inward reception of materials, and of simultaneously decreasing the same through the combustion of its substance with the oxygen of the atmosphere. The first of these processes is called nutrition, and the second, respiration. We shall first examine the psychical phenomena which precede and determine the act of respiration. These phenomena are often very simple and of littlesignificance. If the Micro-organism lives in the water, which is most frequently the case, the oxygen contained in solution therein passes directly through the cellular cuticle by dialysis and comes in contact with the body of the protoplasm; in...« less