270 ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM vz 



structureless germ, to that in which it exhibits a 

 highly complicated structure and a corresponding 

 diversity of powers. Mr. Spencer says with great 

 justice 



"That they gradually increase in mass ; that they become, 

 little l>y little, more complex ; that, at the same time^ their 

 parts grow more mutually dependent ; and that they continue to 

 live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of their 

 units appear and disappear, are broad peculiarities which 

 bodies politic display, in common with all living bodies, and in 

 which they and living bodies differ from everything else." 



In a very striking passage of this essay Mr. 

 Spencer shows with what singular closeness a 

 parallel between the development of a nervous 

 system, which is the governing power of the body 

 in the series of animal organisms, and that of 

 government, in the series of social organisms, ran 

 be drawn : 



"Strange as the assertion will be thought," says Mr. S; 

 "our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy 

 functions that are, in sundry respects, comparable to those dis- 

 charged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal..-. . . . 

 The cerebrum co-ordinates the countless heterogeneous consider- 

 ations which affect the piesent and future welfare of the indi- 

 vidual as a whole ; and the Legislature co-ordinates th< 

 i heterogeneous considerations which affect the immediate and 

 I remote welfare of the whole community. We may describe the 

 ollice of the brain as that of arrntijimj the interests of lifcj 

 physical, intellectual, moral, social ; and a good brain is one in 

 which the desires answering t<> their respective inte;. 

 balanced, that the conduct they jointly dictate sacrifices none of 

 them. Similarly we may describe the ollice of Parliament as 

 that of nciriKjiii'j tin- interests of the various classes in a com- 



