68 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Let'jers. 



The regulating system shows a like parallel in details. The 

 lowest tribes are nearly without government, as the lowest animals 

 without nerves. Then comes the rude chief, like a simple gan- 

 glion. Then comes the union of tribes, with one and its chief 

 raised to a kind of leadership, like the lower articulate with seg- 

 ments partially subordinate to the head. Then comes monarchy, 

 with its king controlling all subordinate rulers and members, like 

 a vertebrate with its nervous system fully centered in the brain. 

 But, as in the rising nervous structure, cerebrum and cerebellum, 

 the deliberative centers, imperceptibly arising, come to over- 

 shadow and control the sensory centers ; so in the state, delibera- 

 tive assemblies, imperceptibly arising, come to overshadow and 

 control the personal will of the monarch, and government becomes 

 constitutional instead of autocratic, reasonable instead of impul- 

 sive and passionate, Finall}^, as in the animal, the internal func- 

 tions are regulated by the sympathetic and vaso-motor systems 

 acting automatically ; so the internal functions of the state, its 

 industry and commerce, come to be self-regulating, and need no in- 

 terference from the government. 



These comparisons, doubtless, seem fanciful to many. But if 

 life is one, as we are learning, then such resemblances are natural. 

 Of course such parallelisms must not be pressed to details of 

 structure ; but in functions, they are not only natural but neces- 

 sary. Society, like any other living thing, must have its suste- 

 nance and distribution, and its organs for these functions ; and Mr. 

 Spencer's analysis seems in general not only ingenious but true. 



But, on a few points, Mr. Spencer seems open to criticism. The 

 animal digestive system seems to correspond not to all the pro- 

 ductive industries of the state, but only to the manufacturing in- 

 dustries. Digestion, like manufacture, takes the raw materials of 

 nature second-hand and prepares them for use. Hence digestion 

 is only part of the sustaining function. Beyond the secondary 

 process of preparing the sustenance lies the primary process of 

 getting it. Outside the animal digestive system are organs for 

 gathering food for digestion ; and outside of manufactures are the 

 various agricultural, mining, lumbering, and other industries, for 

 gathering from nature the material for manufacture. All these 

 processes, of course, belong to the sustaining system. So the sus" 



