activity. This constitution may be some day imitated by the devices of experiment. When that result is achieved the anatomical element will live in isolation exactly as it lives in the organic association, and the mysterious bond which causes its solidarity with the rest of the economy will become intelligible. In fact, we may defer more or less the maturity of this prophecy, but there is no doubt that we are daily nearing its fulfilment.
The general life of the complex being is therefore the more or less perfect synergy, the ordered process of elementary lives. General death is the destruction of these partial lives. The nervous system, the instrument of this harmony of the parts, represents the social bond. It keeps most of the partial elements under its sway, and is thus the intermediary of their relations. The closer this dependence, the higher the development of the nervous apparatus, and the better, also, is assured the universal solidarity and therefore the unity of the organism. Cellular federation assumes the characteristic of a unique individuality in proportion to the development of this nervous centralization. With an ideal perfect nervous system the correlation of the parts would also attain perfection. As Cuvier said: "None could experience change without a change in the rest."
But no animal possesses this extreme solidarity of the parts of the living economy. It is a philosopher's dream. It is the dream of Kant, to whom the perfect organism would be "a teleological system," a system of reciprocal ends and means, a sum total of parts each existing for and by the rest, for and by the whole. An organism so completely connected would be unlikely to live. In fact, living organisms show a
