The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
Now let us contemplate the essential fact in the analogy. The men in an
Australian mining-camp, as M. Pierre Leroy Beaulieu points out, fall into
Anglo-Saxon usages different from those which would characterize a French
mining-camp. Emigrants to a far West settlement in America quickly
establish post-office, bank, hotel, newspaper, and other urban
institutions. We are thus shown that along with certain traits leading to a
general type of social organization, there go traits which independently
produce fit local organizations. Individuals are led into occupations and
official posts, often quite new to them, by the wants of those around--are
now influenced and now coerced into social arrangements which, as shown
perhaps by gambling saloons, by shootings at sight, and by lynchings, are
scarcely at all affected by the central government. Now the physiological
units in each species appear to have a similar combination of capacities.
Besides their general proclivity towards the specific organization, they
show us abilities to organize themselves locally; and these abilities are
in some cases displayed in defiance of the general control, as in the
supernumerary finger or the false joint. Apparently each physiological
unit, while having in a manner the whole organism as the structure which,
along with the rest, it tends to form, has also an aptitude to take part in
forming any local structure, and to assume its place in that structure
under the influence of adjacent physiological units.
A familiar fact supports this conclusion. Everyone has at hand, not
figuratively but literally, an illustration. Let him compare the veins on
the backs of his two hands, either with one another or with the veins on
another person's hands, and he will see that the branchings and
inosculations do not correspond: there is no fixed pattern. But on
progressing inwards from the extremities, the distribution of the veins
becomes settled--there is a pattern-arrangement common to all persons.
These facts imply a predominating control by adjacent parts where control
by the aggregate is less easy. A constant combination of forces which,
towards the centre, produces a typical structure, fails to do this at the
periphery where, during development, the play of forces is less settled.
This peripheral vascular structure, not having become fixed because one
arrangement is as good as another, is in each determined by the immediately
surrounding influences.
§ 97e. And now let us contemplate the verifications which recent
experiments have furnished--experiments made by Prof. G. Born of Breslau,
confirming results earlier reached by Vulpian and adding more striking
results of kindred nature. They leave no longer doubtful the large share
taken by local organizing power as distinguished from central organizing
power.
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