THE BIOLOGICAL UNIT 33 



promotion. Nerve cells in contrast have become 

 attenuated into minute fibers connecting distant 

 structures. These fibers are specialized to con- 

 duct stimuli from one part of the body to another. 

 This they must ever do. But in some manner, not 

 wholly understood, they have a regulatory and 

 controlling action on all of the remaining cells of 

 the body of man. It is no stretch of the imagina- 

 tion to designate them as the ruling class. For it 

 is common experience that the injured nerve re- 

 sults in blindness or paralysis. The nerve cells 

 have a large responsibility in keeping all of the 

 other cells working in harmony, for man's well- 

 being, as they transmit the proper message to 

 gland and muscle at the correct moment. The 

 success of those animals which do their work best 

 justifies us in attaching great importance to their 

 rule. For as we descend the scale of organization 

 and find cells acting independently, we shall see 

 that they are not as expert and therefore not as 

 successful as in man. 



There is nothing that approaches sovietism in 

 the distribution and work of the biological unit in 

 the body of man. The opposite is rather the case, 

 for our unit is arranged into classes, where one 

 must serve as "hewer of thy wood and drawer of 

 thy water," while another takes the rank of the 

 king. This dominance of certain cells and sub- 



