The picture of the universe which has thus arisen before our mind’s eye is a startling one only so long as we keep comparing it with its heliocentric predecessor. How wrong it would be to regard it as something inconceivable for the modern mind, is shown by the fact that the modern physiologist has already been driven to form quite a similar picture of the human organism, as far as it concerns glandular action in this organism. His observations have taught him to distinguish between the gland as a spatially limited physical organ and the gland as a functional sphere, and to conceive of the latter as the essential gland. Seen thus, ‘the spatial and temporal dimensions of each gland are equal to those of the entire organism’ (A. Carrel). In this way we come to see the human organism as a realm of interpenetrating spheres of distinctive physiological activities. Each of these activities is anchored somewhere in the physical body by the anatomically discernible gland-body, and the latter’s relationship to the functional sphere is such that a gland’s ‘physiological individuality is far more comprehensive than its anatomical individuality’.