36 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



Thus we see in the organization of the animal body 

 a perfection of supplementary and reciprocal rela- 

 tionships between the various and unequally differ- 

 entiated parts which must excite not merely 

 admiration but reflection. For may it not be true 

 that the organization of a federal state can profit 

 by applying to itself some of the methods of control 

 which have been so slowly and painfully developed 

 in the federation of structures which we have before 

 us in any one of the higher animal forms? It is 

 certainly true that nature has wonderfully succeeded 

 in securing adaptation between cells having widely 

 different properties and vital interests, and that these 

 have been harmonized for the good of the whole. 

 Probably in the course of evolution those parts 

 which have not been susceptible of adaptation for 

 the benefit of the individual have been slowly 

 eliminated, and is this not almost certainly true of 

 the unadaptable and unsocial individuals of a com- 

 munity ? 



As regards the form of governmental control in 

 the animal organism, there is one additional feature 

 which seems worthy of note in relation to the analogy 

 which has been drawn. The animal organization 

 has been likened to a federation or republic. The 

 comparison holds good in so far as the body is made 

 up of interdependent parts which are in definite 

 ways common tributaries and subordinates of the 

 central nervous system. But the relation is not so 

 simple as this. It has already been pointed out that 



