ORGAN, ORGANIC, ORGANISM. The word organ is derived from the Greek organon, an instrument, and is sometimes employed almost in its original sense. But it has received a signification more peculiarly its own, and with which alone the word organism is connected, as the designation of any of the parts or members of a living body, the organism, being the living whole, animal or vegetable, which these organs compose. The idea of an organism or of organization is almost as much involved in obscurity and difficulty as that of life, with which it is so closely connected. But it is observable that a living body is entirely composed of organs, and these themselves of other organs, until we come to elementary cells; and also, that all the parts are mutually dependent on each other; and therefore an organism has been defined as a natural whole, in which all the parts are mutually to each other means and end. The juice which nourishes a plant is elaborated by the plant itself, although the supplies are drawn from without. The leaves of a plant are produced by the stern, but react upon the stem in promoting its growth. This mutual dependence of parts strongly distinguishes an organism from a machine, in which the parts concur for a common end, to which each contributes in its own way, but in which each does not contribute to the support of all or any of the rest. In organisms, moreover, besides this support and maintenance of the different parts or organs, there is a provision for the production of new organisms of the same kind, the reproduction or propagation of the species, to which there is nothing analogous bayond the sphere of organic life. Amongst organic beings, as we ascend in the scale from the
lowest kinds of plants and animals to the highest, we observe an increasing number of organs and of functions of organs. In the animal kingdom organic life appears as possessed of sensation and spontaneous motion; whilst plants are limited to growth. assimilation, and propagation. The question as to the nature of organic processes con nects itself with a most difficult question as to the relation of chemical processes with psychical functions, chemical processes being certainly carried on, but singularly modi fied or directed by the living powers of the organic being.—The term organic is frequently pplied to those things in which an analogy is traced to living creatures, in the mutual dependence of parts. Such an analogy may be traced in social life and in political life; and the more perfectly this relation of mutual dependence or mutual usefulness is estab lished the better is the state of things, social or political. It is also the highest praise of a work of art that it suggests this idea of an organic relation of its parts to each other and to the whole.—Organic laws are those which are fundamental or most essential to the system to which they belong.