202 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



daughter to an aristocrat. After the ceremony the 

 mother tried to show her affection and thankful- 

 ness towards her son-in-law ; the latter repulsed 

 her, drily informing her that he did not relish 

 such demonstrations of affection, and that she must 

 keep her distance and not forget class distinctions. 

 The unhappy woman felt overwhelmed. The 

 night following she began to feel an insatiable 

 thirst, and to pass water in large quantities : the 

 urinal vessels, on examination a few days after, 

 contained 100 grams of sugar per litre. 



" A man, as Ch. Fere* observed, lost in a short 

 time several members of his family, who died of 

 consumption; a girl, his child, sickened and also 

 died; after these griefs he began to get fat, and 

 from 60 kilos attained a weight of 106." 



One sees very clearly from these examples how 

 the nervous system, the great dominating apparatus, 

 not only serves for the faculty of thought, but has 

 in strict dependence upon it all the chemistry of 

 the cells upon which depend nutrition, and, as we 

 shall see, reproduction also. 



A curious thing that gives us an idea of the 

 control of the nervous system, and how this holds, 

 so to speak, the guiding rein, is in observing how 

 the nerve-fibres terminate inside the glands, and 

 once within divide and subdivide, in order to 



