ANALOGUES OF THE NERVOUS CENTRES. 411 



eventually become agents which enforce, in their respec- 

 tive segments, the orders of the cephalic ganglion. 



The parallelism holds still farther. We remarked above, 

 when speaking of the rise of aboriginal kings, that in pro- 

 portion as their territories and duties increase, they are 

 obliged not only to perform their executive functions by 

 deputy, but also to gather round themselves advisers to aid 

 them in th^ir directive functions ; and that thus, in place 

 of a solitary governing unit, there grows up a group of 

 governing units, comparable to a ganglion consisting of 

 many cells. Let us here add, that the advisers and chief 

 officers who thus form the rudiment of a ministry, tend 

 from the beginning to exercise a certain control over the 

 ruler. By the information they give and the opinions they 

 express, they sway his judgment and affect his commands. 

 To this extent he therefore becomes a channel through 

 which are communicated the directions oriojinatino^ with 

 them ; and in course of time, when the advice of ministers 

 becomes the acknowledged source of his actions, the king 

 assumes very much the character of an automatic centre, 

 reflecting the impressions made on him from without. 



Beyond this complication of governmental structuie, 

 many societies do not progress ; but in some, a further de- 

 velopment takes place. Our own case best illustrates this 

 further development, and its further analogies. To kings 

 and their ministries have been added, in England, other 

 great directive centres, exercising a control which, at first 

 small, has been gradually becoming predominant : as with 

 the great governing ganglia that especially distinguish the 

 highest classes of living beings. Strange as the assertion 

 will be thought, our Houses of Parliament discharge in the 

 social economy, functions that are in sundry respects com- 

 parable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a 

 vertebrate animal. As it is in the nature of a single gan 

 glion to be affected only by special stimuli from particular 



