1866. | On Cell Life. 243 
The construction of the nervous system makes it very clear that 
something takes place here which differs from what occurs in the 
plant or plant-like tissues of the animal. The nerve-cells cannot 
only work externally, and operate on one another, by modifying 
the fluid in which they are placed ; they can work upon one another 
much more direetly by means of their connecting filaments of proto- 
plasm ; they can mutually communicate their conditions, which as 
material appearances are called conditions of irritation, but which 
from their own stand-point are sensations or acts of the will. 
Here, too, the means are provided to enable a cell (that is to say, an 
organic subject) to be sensible, not only of that which operates on 
itself alone, but also of that which affects a thousand other cells 
continuously connected with it. Thus a cell can learn (if the ex- 
pression is not too strange) by the experiences of others. ‘Through 
this it becomes possible for the conditions of animation to attaim to 
that high perfection, in virtue of which the consciousness awakens 
to that clearness which we experience in ourselves. 
The comparison of our body with a State is now no longera 
difficult matter. The cells of the vegetative functions constitute a 
race as it were of mentally-stunted people, among whom each man 
lives shut up by himself, without knowing much of his neighbour. 
The epithelial cells of the intestines we may more particularly 
compare to the agricultural classes, who derive nourishment for 
themselves and for others from the ground. They give this raw 
material to the blood-cells, which represent the mercantile classes. 
These disperse it over the whole State, but are certainly bad trades- 
men in the common view of such matters, since they exchange their 
valuable commodities for nothing but used-up rubbish, which they 
must dispose of as quickly as possible to the appropriate organs, the 
lungs and kidneys. 
This laborious population bears the yoke of an aristocracy, and 
submits to be governed by it. I mean the nervous system. There 
is within this aristocracy a strict system of caste, or I might perhaps 
better say, a bureaucratic classification. It has also to maintain a 
standing army in the muscular fibres, and must hold it ever ready 
for action, for our State is never at peace, and indeed must con- 
tinually be fighting with other States, and with the forces of nature 
in the doubtful battle of our existence. The highest place in our 
aristocracy is not held by a monarch, but by a body of equals. 
They are the ganglion-cells of the great cerebral hemispheres which 
so largely constitute the upper part of the nervous system. Here 
all the filaments meet, here all intelligence arrives at last, and hence 
proceed the most important decrees to the whole nation. But it 
must not be supposed that all the sentient filaments of the more 
highly sensitive organs, of the skin and so on, pass directly to the 
cells of the great hemispheres of the brain, and that the motor 
