The organic vision of Hélan Jaworski

same rhythm reigns which, deep down in the warm seas, has caused the medusa to move since primordial time.

The sponges are like bags attached to rocks or bits of wood and have a large orifice which is exclusively an anus. This orifice has a well developed sphincter which regulates the flow of water. Excretion is the dominant note of the sponges. They feed on debris of all kinds and rapidly defile the water round them. Spongy characteristics predominate in our glands and especially in the kidneys.

The echinoderms, the starfishes and sea urchins, are the last of the animal plants and show characteristics of both the polyps and sponges. If we look at a starfish it is not difficult to see that it is a preliminary sketch of a vertebra. The arms of the starfish are formed of calcareous plaques and in the centre there is a bead of nervous tissue. The ok bones are vertebrae but can be called ‘milk vertebrae’ and precede the real vertebrae without actually creating them. A process of interiorisation can be detected in the echinoderms. The arms of the starfish become interiorised and the animal becomes a spherical box—the sea urchin. The sea urchin looks like, and in fact, sketches out the skull. So, just as the vertebral column in mammals goes through a series of interiorisations towards the head, the most interiorised pole, so the starfish leads up to the more interiorised sea urchin.

Another interesting point occurs with the starfish. For the first time the axis of the body is horizontal. With the polyps and sponges it was vertical. Now the axis changes 90° and from this point all animals have a transverse axis, with the mouth in front and the anus behind. Only when we come to man do we get the dramatic return to the vertical axis.

The cranium and vertebrae, so bravely sketched out by the echinoderms, disappear in the worms who have dispensed with everything in order to develop and perfect their reproductive organs to an unprecedented degree. They strike the note ‘reproduction’ and more particularly the male reproductive function and organs. The Balanoglossus, which looks like a penis, spends his life boring a hole in the sand which he lines with mucus, and by contracting and erecting his body moves backwards and

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