146 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



food Stuffs to the centers of population. Amid 

 much that is fantastic and tedious, he says: 

 "And in railways we also see, for the first time 

 in the social organism, a system of double 

 channels conveying currents in opposite di- 

 rections as do the arteries and veins of a well- 

 developed animal." 



"We come at length," says Spencer, "to the 

 nervous system." This is by far the most in- 

 teresting item in Spencer's catalogue, because 

 it is here that the evolutionary philosopher and 

 the Manchester School politician come into 

 open contradiction. 



"We have now to compare the appliances by 

 which a society as a whole, is regulated, with 

 those by which the movements of an individual 

 creature are regulated." 



Beginning with the nervous systems of 

 lower animals he discovers their inferiority to 

 lie in the absence of a controlling center. The 

 lower Annulosa is composed of a series of ring- 

 like segments. Each ring has its own nerve 

 ganglia linked by connecting nerves, but "very 

 incompletely dependent on any general con- 

 trolling power. Hence it results that when the 

 body is cut in two, the hinder part continues 

 to move forward under the propulsion of its 

 numerous legs; and that when the chain of 

 gang-lia has been divided without severing the 



