VII. Principles of Psychosomatic Physiology

Most important of all, he must be able to discern very clearly the mutual interrelation of neural function, breathing-rhythm and metabolic activity respectively. These three forms of activity subsist, not alongside of, but within one another. They interpenetrate and enter each other. Metabolic activity is present at all points in the organism; it permeates both the rhythmic organs and the neural ones. But within the rhythmic it is not the somatic foundation of feeling, and within the neural it is not that of ideation. On the contrary, in both of these fields it is the correlative of will-activity permeating rhythm and permeating the nerves respectively. Only materialistic presupposition can relate the element of metabolism in the nerves with the process of ideation. Observation with its roots in reality reports quite differently. It is compelled to recognise that metabolism is present in the nerve to the extent that will is permeating it. And it is the same with the somatic apparatus for rhythm. Everything within that organ that is of the nature of metabolism has to do with the element of will present in it. It is always willing that must be brought into connection with metabolic activity, always feeling that must be related to rhythmic occurrence, irrespective of the particular organ in which metabolism and rhythm are operating.