THE NATURAL 



CHAPTER XX 



TYRANNY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 



Accord and discord between organs and acts. Tarses and 

 sacred scarab. The hand of man. Mediocre fitness of 

 sexual organs for copulation. Origin of "luxuria." 

 The animal is a nervous system served by organs. The 

 organ does not determine the aptitude. Man's hand 

 inferior to his genius. Substitution of one sense for 

 another. Union and role of the senses in love. Man 

 and animal under the tyranny of the nervous system. 

 Wear and tear of humanity compensated by acquisi- 

 tions. Man's inheritors. 



IT is a universal belief that nature or God, in their wis- 

 dom, have made the corporal organs in the best possible 

 form: perfection of the eye, of the hand, of the paw-jaw 

 of the mantis, of the sexual apparatus of man, of the 

 bird or the scarab, the furnishing tarses of hymenoptera, 

 the beaver's tail, the grasshopper's hams, the cicada's 

 tambourine. It is sometimes true and very often false. 

 It happens that there appears an exact concord between 

 the organ and the act which it is to perform; but it 

 happens also, and that not rarely, that the organs seem 

 in no way fashioned for the deed they must accomplish: 

 most of them are indeed chance tools, with which the 

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