PRIMARY AND DERIVED ANIMALS: A HISTORY OF A KIDNEY DYSFUNCTION

B. Lukács

President of Matter Evolution Subcommittee of the Geonomy Scientific Committee of HAS

CRIP RMKI H-1525 Bp.114 Pf. 49, Budapest, Hungary

ABSTRACT

            A hospitalisation 7 years ago gave me ideas about the segmented body of Amphioxus and about a possibly originally segmented bodies of proto-Vertebrata. This then gives new perspectives about Death, Mind &c. If you have time, read it; if not, or if you suspect I am simply crazy, do not tread. Anyway, maybe you would be excited/disturbed, and your duty is to keep yourself quiet. But then you passes something interesting.

1. THE RAW STORY

            In February, 2003 I got a strange kidney dysfunction, whose cause remained completely unknown. (I personally believe that my lowest brain parts called the "Reptile Complex" by Paul McLean were responsible but I cannot tell any objective argument for my hypothesis; it comes from self-observation of years. The actual reason is irrelevant for the message of the story below.) Briefly, both of my kidneys stopped, as far as one can tell, simultaneously. Of course, in Februaries almost everybody in Hungary has flu, cold &c., from mild to dangerous; I had some mild one, plus I was moderately sleepy; however previous day I discussed Colour Vision, TV colours, avian colour vision a lot without any mental dysfunction observed by me or by the partners. Then I slept the whole night and on the morning I rather was reluctant to get up. I slept briefly several times, and then in noontime I started to sleep once more. My doctoral student, Ms. Nóra Fáy, whom I must thank, called my phone several times but I seemed to be unavailable, which was strange. I briefly awoke when the ambulance arrived. Then I again slept and awoke on the third day. Then the nurses told that I regularly consumed the meals previously: they brought the meals, I ate them, and continued to sleep. I do not remember; maybe the reptile complex supervised/organised the feeding.

            Of course, the continuous sleeping was caused by the kidney dysfunction signaled by an abnormally high level of the creatinine in my blood. The dysfunction left the waste products in my blood, and then the blood disturbed the working of my organs, especially my brain; the brain is rather sensitive. The status is called uraemia, because the urine remains in the blood (haema). Creatinine in the blood is a good signal of non-secreting. You will see my creatinine levels in due course. On the first day awaken I already had some kidney function but negligible, some 10 % of normal. (You will see this too.) My kidney ignored the stimulations, so the doctors started to dialyse me, altogether 5 times, on every other day. Dialysis is harmless, painless &c. but extremely boring; fortunately I had a pocket radio, newspapers, and sometimes a book. For any case I observed my thinking process to be slowed down, but I was not surprised because I was continuously informed about my high creatinine levels. Anyways it is an interesting situation when somebody is dumb, but he knows that now he is dumb, and also knows why.

            My creatinine level indeed was high, as I immediately knew when a doctor unorthodoxly told the number to a mere patient. I am not a kidney specialist, but I read Nourse’s The Counterfeit Man [1], a sci-fi short story where extraterrestrials kill a member of a Terrestrial expedition and an ET enters the spaceship disguised as the killed man. The counterfeit is almost exact, but his creatinine level is impossibly high. In the story the physician of the spaceship explains to the Captain that if the creatinine level is at 100 mg/l then there is great trouble indeed. Well, he measured once 250 mg; but in a dead body. So I asked my doctor if she measured levels higher than mine; she said Yes, twice in such who survived, but only some 20 % higher. So wee both saw that the other is not an anxious type and they started dialysis.

            Well, the dialysis prevented catastrophes, but it is not a nice long-term alternative. The doctors continued to give medication (and sent me twice on some very boring observations to find The Cause; unsuccessfully), and I must not have doubts that the medications helped. However their opinion was that it was not enough; I should have done something too. One of them discussed with me what could I do. Of course I am no kidney specialist. However common sense told me that if the doctors see no obvious reason why the kidneys are so lazy, they have to be triggered. The only easy way to trigger them is to drink and drink (mainly water); the task of the kidneys is to process the water, so maybe they will.

            I was told that it is not easy to drink really much water; I told that it was no problem for me, except that still I was unable to go to the water tap. The doctor instructed the nurses to put glasses of water at my table as frequently as they passed by, and then left the room, as far as I saw, very doubtful about the practicality of my idea. (Maybe it is not so easy to drink a lot.) I asked my next visitor to buy half a liter lemon juice (50%), and when the glasses of water appeared I added always a small amount of lemon juice; then I drank. No problem: you pour the water into the oral cavity and then swallow. Of course, tepid water from a tap is not exactly nice but i) if somebody is in a hospital, things are normally not too nice; and ii) for this was there the lemon juice. Indeed, in a few days my kidney activity went up a lot. The Figure shows my daily kidney activity (cl), creatinine level and sodium ion level as frequently as they were measured and the duration of the dialysis. There is a pre-hospital data set put arbitrarily to the Day -5 (indeed there was a blood sample 6 years earlier plus I put the normal average for kidney activity) and there was a control blood sampling some weeks later. I spent 27 days in the hospital and left when the sampling showed either normal level or very near to normal and improving for some 10 data. You may see correlations or anticorrelations on the Figure. I support you with the extra information that the molecular weight of creatinine is 113; then you can recalculate the data into Nourse’s convention. For blood samplings the data are from my final report & control data; as for the kidney activity after some days the nurses recognised that a physicist can make as good laboratory minutes as they, or even better, so they gave the previous data for me to continue. Thanks for it; otherwise I could not write this study.

            Chapter 2 deals with Life on Various Levels and Herbert Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy. Anyway, I exist maybe on Level 3 but my cells on Level 1. Chapter 3 is the story on the Figure on cellular level. Chapter 4 is a discussion (strictly speaking: inconclusive) if a secondary level exists between me and my cells. Sect. 5 compares a partly effectively decapitated (by stroke) physicist with actually decapitated frogs. Chapter 6 discusses animals in the half-billion year long process of E pluribus unum; I must write such a Chapter if I am the president of the Matter Evolution subcommittee.

            But where are the kidneys? At last, Chapters 7 & 8 deal with kidneys, segmented or not. (We have generally exactly 2 unsegmented kidneys; but this is new in Evolution. Until amphibians up, the kidneys are segmented.

            Sect. 9 draws structural analogies between bodies of annelids & vertebrates plus the termite hill on one side and Bodies politic on the other; our guides here are an Afrikaans lawyer, poet (developer of the national language) and naturalist, famous author of the Soul of the White Ant, and a Roman consul and successful orator. Finally, Chapter 10 asks logical questions generally not asked, even if it does not give answers. There are 3 Appendices too.

            Let the circus start! 

2. THE ORGANISATION OF LIFE ON DIFFERENT LEVELS AND ITS REFLECTION IN HERBERT SPENCER'S SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY

            Obviously the reason behind this study is not as if I believed that anybody is interested in my kidney problems 6 years ago. (Practically nobody was interested even then; I had visitors, but they only told repeatedly that "You should be careful in the future", which was nice but pointless since nobody knew the Cause. You cannot be careful about everything.) However I knew even then something about Herbert Spencer, I had read Marais' famous work about the termite hills [2] (of course not in the original Afrikaans but in Magyar translation); I was next door to the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the resurrection of Croatia, earlier I wrote an article about the organisation levels of the Vertebrata [3]; but it was always clear that I should read Hatschek too. Now I have been able to do that  [4], so I can write the study properly.

            But first let us speak about organisation levels. I studied at the R. Eötvös University between 1965 & 1970; therefore I had to learn Marxism. (The official names changed from semester to semester but it was, say, Dialectic Materialism.) If I had to learn, I learnt. Now, K. Marx was from the Rhineland, especially from Trier, the city of the Three Magi and the Crozier. Marx started his 1848 activity (which led to emigration) as a protest against the Prussian overlordship of the Rhineland.

            Germany, more precisely the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had been disrupted in 1648, in the peaces closing the 30 Years War. Afterward the Emperor generally directly governed only the Austrias and Bohemias and the remaining part of the Empire was in many parts (of course under the Emperor, but that was nominal). Then, after the end of the usurpation of General Buonaparte Prussia started to reunite the German Lands (without Austria & Bohemia).

            But Prussia was from the extreme Northeastern end of Germany (some part of her was even not Germany), so the basic structure of the Prussian society was very unsimilar to that of Southwestern Rhineland. Marx felt this; and wanted to understand why he did not like Prussian tyranny. Therefore the rules of associations were taught in Hungarian Marxism; so I learnt them.

            Roughly, there are 3 degrees of individualisation in history, tells Marx. In the old, mainly Eastern, agricultural civilisations there was no private property. (You may think about Old Egypt, Old China or India.) Maybe the people had their clothes, even their flats; but not the land. Society worked as a society.

            Then came King Theseus of Athens (XIVth c. BC?) who distributed some lands. The other ones remained common and were administered by the King, the Chief Minister or by the temples. And this was the rule throughout Classical Antiquity in Greece, later in the Roman Empire. A Roman Citizen (from Emperor Tiberius through Saulus/Paulus of Tarsus to the unnamed Roman proletariat) had double roles: he shared the property of the Populus Romanus (so he got sometimes corn, oil or wine allotments from the state and ludi circenses); and he might have had private property as well (of course beggars & proletariat hardly).

            Then came the Germans. The Western Roman Empire vanished, the ideal became the independent individual; still the bishops caught some part of Common Property, which so survived in the ex-Imperial parts. (But not in the Northeast, which therefore took Luther's suggestion of Cheap Church, so local Dukes were able to privatize the remaining Common Property for themselves.)

            So the more or less free population of the Rhineland was the product of thousand years of individualisation; and the Prussians were products of a different process.

            And there are aggregations in which the individual is almost dissolved, but there are as well aggregations where the individuum is practically unchanged, only it interacts (weakly) with others. And there are grades in between as well. We may call the two extremes Unity & Confederation, while we may call the "grades between" as Federation [5].

            As for States (which everybody knows) France is no doubt Unity: La Republique Une et Indivisible. Only Girondists and Vendée Royalists would get the idea of Autonomy and such absurdities.

            On the other hand, the European Union is a Confederation (at most); the members keep their governments and they are still quite governable; the interactions are secondary. If the Union expelled a State (which is quite contrary to the rules but almost happened with Austria in 2000, when they elected a government not in favour in the other 14), the expelled member State would be able to survive in an ordered way. Similarly, when the USA expelled Texas in 1865, Texas survived as the State of Lone Star. Switzerland is officially the Confoederario Helvetica.

            But many States are federations. E.g. present USA seems a federation. An expelled State would have very serious problems; e.g. no Secretary of State at all, the local House of Representatives is not too active & such.

            Yugoslavia was a federation. The Federal State existed; but the parts existed too. Croatia was forcefully incorporated into Serbia at the end of 1918, organised first as a part of the SHS Kingdom (Serb-Croat-Slovene), then of Yugoslavia. In 1944 General Broz (Tito), half Slovene, half Croatian, slightly increased the "autonomy" of the States; and came 1991. Croatia rose again; because she was not really dead.

            And now comes Herbert Spencer about the animals. Of course I did not read the many Volumes of Herbert Spencer; but I have read Collins' work, which is an intelligent extract of Spencer [6] in a single Volume. I read it in Magyar, but that is a careful translation made by top intellectuals of Hungary.

            Spencer distinguished primary, secondary and tertiary animals. (He calls them somewhat more complicated: second rank of something (aggregation &c.) and such, but I will not be finicky.) As for plants he goes until 6^th grade. A primary animal does not have repeated parts. He worked in the second half of XIX^th century, so his notions are somehow clouded for us; but clearly he thought about the unicellular organisms. They may have parts; but not repeated ones.

            The next grade is the secondaries: clearly composed of primaries, so of cells. Obviously lots of Metazoa are secondaries: sometimes it is not clear if they are or not.

            This is so, because there are tertiaries too. They have repeated secondaries as parts. See [6], Part 2, Chap. 6. Even now, more than a century later, it is sure that an Annelida, e.g. an eartworm, is tertiary. It is composed of repeated "small worms". Of course, a few segments in front and some at the very end are different, because it is better if the earthworm has only one mouth, one anus and a few eyes; these arguments are clearly discussed in [6]. But in the mid-region lots of segments are practically identical.

            An earthworm is even not too disturbed if the mid-region contains 3 more or 4 less segments. For an insect the number of segments is always 21. But in the most primitive insects still all abdominal segments have legs; and some of the 6 segments of the head have them too, only specialised as antennae, mandibles &c.

            Earthworms survive if you cut them in the mid-region: the fore part generates hind regions, one will have an anus and lo, there is the integral earthworm. Even more interesting is that the hindpart also can generate eyes, mouth &c. (Croatia rose again, upgraded the local government as State one, nominated a Secretary of State and some ambassadors.) It would be interesting to know how the earthworm feels about the partial continuity; but we cannot communicate with him. Communication would be slightly more hopeful with an insect; but we clearly cannot communicate with a decapitated insect or spider. In addition they cannot regenerate the lost segment, so a decapitated one will die; still sometimes after surprisingly long times. So it seems that an earthworm is the analogue of a Confederation; the far ancestors of the insects were such too but for now Integration went far enough and now they are at the other side of the Federation, near to Unity.

            And now let us see ourselves: Vertebrata. Spencer is definite: we are secondaries. No real segments, the seeming segmentation is only an accommodation to, say, swimming by undulations. No repeated parts, no repeated kidneys, &c.

            I could stop here. Indeed, I have exactly 2 kidneys, so when they stopped, I got to the hospital because of uraemia.

            However, the Amphioxus (various Branchiostoma spp.) is a close relative of us (as close as we Vertebrate have at all; the Point of Divergence is Precambrian). An Amphioxus is seemingly similar to a primitive "fish" (say, a lamprey); but it definitely have segments, repeated kidneys, gonads, "hearts" and such; see [6], and further references in [4]. So when an Amphioxus procreates, not the Amphioxus does it, but some segments of Jack produce sperm which are expelled to the ova of Jill's segments. We can feel this situation very, very strange, but do not forget: we also have one at right, one at left. And still we generally do not contemplate later about the parent (I mean: left or right?).

            Now, I think that in Vertebrata the practical differences between Organisation Levels 2 & 3 are almost eradicated via the vanishing repetitive parts (but the repeated vertebrae are still there) and by the establishment of a very extensive tertiary environment (e.g. via a unified blood & lymph circulation). But the difference between Levels 1 and 2-3 are still clear. See Chap. 3 and again the Figure.

            As for our conscience, that is unique; but this is because it is in the neocortex; and also wait until Chap. 8. (For the possible dual, right/left conscience, of which the right is seemingly suppressed without splitbrain operations see e.g. [7].) Now the Amphioxus central nervous system is the dorsal chord, which is either homologous with our dorsal chord or with that plus a part of the brain. Anyways the new parts of our brain have no Amphioxus homologues, and in Amphioxus the integration of the dorsal chord is much weaker than in us. (See [4] and references therein.) So our unique Mind is a new thing; Amphioxus is governed segmentally.

3. THE STORY ON CELLULAR LEVEL

            Let us see the curves. As for the kidney activity, there is no date for Day 1 (day after getting into the hospital), and it is an absurdly low 10 cl on Day 2. So the kidneys did stop simultaneously; reason unknown but must have been on either Level 2 (the kidney region) or Level 3 (the Vertebrata individuum, governed mainly from the brain; dangerous medicines are out of question, I would have remembered and they were not in store). Therefore creatinine level went high (still slightly increasing until Day 8, with 1017 μmol/l), because of global blood circulation in this Levels 2 & 3 are indistinguishable. You can see the clear anticorrelation of kidney activity & creatinine level, which is of course trivial; dialysis was made between Days 2 & 11, was stopped because of increasing kidney activity and decreasing creatinine level, but the kidney activity was maximal 5 days later with 645 (!) cl.

            On the same time you can see that the Na level was constant during the whole crisis. (Well, it went up a few %, when dialysis was stopped and the creatinine level started to decrease; but no more than a few %, and that when I was already returning to normal levels. Maybe a biologist can guess the reason of this disturbance; maybe not even he.

            I got a partial answer from a physician who was surprised about my interest in my working. She told that "Na level is governed on cellular level, so it is independent of the working of the kidneys". I can accept the explanation because it is conform with the data, and because I am no biologist. Then my question is: how much time after global death starts the Na level to deviate from normal? This is really a question; I can live without an answer, of course, but it is important for the understanding of the notion of Death of a tertiary animal.

            And this Chapter may end with the morale that on Fig. 1 you clearly see both the behaviour determined on Level 1 (cells) and on a higher level. We still cannot tell if creatinine is governed on Level 2 or 3 or if there is a Level 3 at all (Herbert Spencer was against it), so we continue the discussion.

4. DOES ANYTHING EXIST BETWEEN HUMAN & CELLULAR LEVELS?

            As I told earlier, Herbert Spencer's answer was No [6]. He may and may not have been right; I believe that he was wrong, but he was no doubt more famous a philosopher than I, even if I am the head of the Matter Evolution Subcommittee. So let us go first to earthworms; them even he accepted as tertiary animals.

            An earthworm routinely loses always some cells (Level 1), but for a while new ones are generated as well. This is Death on Level 1, but nothing so drastic on Levels 2 & 3.

            Now consider an earthworm just been dug out by a naughty boy who got the task from his father to collect earthworms for angling. (English is sexist language, my Magyar is not, but in the present context English is correct. Much less mothers go to angling than fathers; and girls generally do not do what I just going to describe.)

            If the boy is naughty, then, being naughty, surely he performs the experiment to cut an earthworm into two with the spade. We know what will happen: the earthworm regenerates. Both halves form, sooner or later, the missing parts, and the final result is 2 earthworms.

            On secondary level, a few segments on both sides of the cutting are harmed and die. The others survive. In earthworms Level 2 is easily observable and no doubt it exists. Also, I think, no sane biologist would doubt about the existence of Level 2 in Amphioxus, with clear segmental organisation, with segmental consciences (if disturbed moderately with horsehair kicks, only the actual segment and maybe the neighbours try to go away), with segmental multiple gonads &c. But Herbert Spencer did not accept the intermediate level in us.

            Was he right? How to decide?

            What did happen on tertiary ("earthworm") level? Did the particular E3 vanish and two successors, E3¹ and E3² appeared?

            It is difficult to empathize with an earthworm, so I am not sure. But surely, E3¹ & E3² are more direct continuators of E3 than human children of their mother. There are at least 2 reasons; the first is rather trivial, so let us handle it only in a few sentences.

            In the normal way of things a human child has two parents, giving almost equal information to inherit. But observe that parthenogenesis is well known in Regnum Animalia, it is even normal in some groups (e.g. Ciccidae, tertiaries). Of course, it is not easy to feel what is felt by an insect. However it seems that there is a parthenogenic lizard too [8], and with some effort we can try to feel as a lizard. It is told that the lizard of Ref. [8] lost the males, and the females are now parthenogenic, but they still need copulation with males of closely-related lizard species, irrelevant genetically. Parthenogenesis is easily induced in rabbits, so it is not impossible in woman; but how to detect?

            A parthenogenic daughter would be genetically identical with the mother, so let us try to visualize the relation of E3 and the new earthworms by comparing them with a mother and her parthenogenic twins. The difference is tremendous.

            The hypothetic parthenogenic successor inherited 1 (one) cell from her mother. The DNA is the same, but everything belonging to Levels 2 & 3 are lost. On the other hand, E3¹ and E3² inherited roughly halves of E3. A few segments and some cells at the dividing plane died, but most segments survived. In the process there is some death in Level 1, some segments also die on Level 2, but the original earthworm (Level 3) has not died; although it is not living anymore either. Human languages may be clumsy sometimes in earthworm context.

            My kidney problem could not demonstrate the existence of Level 2. The reason is twofold. First, humans have exactly 2 kidneys, so they are not organised on Level 2 even if that level exists. (Sorry. If I use Indicative, that suggests that the statement is true. But a Conjuctive would suggest that it is untrue. What to do? Also, exactly 2 is not exactly true. More than 30 years ago I drank beer with a young colleague who stated that he had 3 kidneys, so he had to go to the restroom frequently. But the phenomenon is rather rare.) And, second, all the data during my kidney dysfunction came from Level 3, mainly via the composition of my blood.

            I have an earlier dysfunction of different nature, so Chapter 5 will be somewhat an excursion.

5. THE DECAPITATED PHYSICIST SYNDROME

            Well, Biology knows it as the Decapitated Frog Syndrome. If careful, you can operate away the frog's head, and still the frog lives (for a while, of course). The story is old: I can refer [9] from 1879, but it must have gone back several more years because the experiment is somewhat a commonplace when [9] mentions it. I am going to quote a small part of the article.

            "Take a frog and irritate the upper part of the right thigh with a strong acid. It will immediately put up the foot of the same side and rub off the acid."

Aside

Dr. Brakenridge can obviously not empathise with a tetrapod, even if he is one too. The above 2 sentences have any meaning only if the acid had been put on the fore right thigh, and then the frog used its hind right foot. The frog has two right thighs.

Aside ends

"If by any means it be prevented from using this foot, it will then raise the left [hind; B.L.] foot and rub it off ... Cut off the frog's head, and repeat the experiment. ... Again it raises the [hind; B.L.] foot of the same side and rubs off the acid. Cut off the right [hind; B.L.] foot, and once more apply the acid to the thigh. It raises the footless leg, cannot reach the spot, pauses a moment as if for reflection, then lifts the left foot and rubs the acid off, just as if its head were on."

            Observe 2 expressions from the last sentence: "as if for reflection" and "as if its head were on". Of course, when first this experiment was performed, surely the result was unexpected. It was already more or less generally accepted that the highest intellectual activity had a localised place (so no soul without localisation governs them), and in higher vertebrates the intellectual center is in the brain. Now, if the frog is decapitated, then it has no more a brain. What behaves itself "as if for reflection"? What mimics the brain "as if its head were on"?

            Well, the only rational answer was the spinal cord. It was already known that the spinal cord was primary in local reflexes. But this rubbing off is not local. The brainless frog uses one leg to rub off something from a thigh of another extremity; and when it is unsuccessful, it uses another. I am not going to state that the headless frog "decides", of course. Even a frog with head on is so stupid compared to us that it is a serious problem of definition if it can or cannot "decide". And a headless frog is stupid even compared to a frog with head on. However the spinal cord of a decapitated frog can integrate the remaining part of the frog.

            For higher organisms as reptiles, birds and mammals the decapitation is lethal; but for birds it is a commonplace that they still can run for a while without the head; and Brakenridge [9] saw a partridge with head shot away to continue its flight "over half a field in the most perfect manner". And since him the operational technique has been improved. Now it is possible to cut the nerves in the neck, not the neck itself. Such spinal (and other) animals can be kept living on and being investigated for a long time.

            I am not a neurologist, so I am still looking for good references in English; originally I read two Magyar books, one a University textbook [10], [11]. For a while be they enough. Ref. [10] mentions a variant of the Decapitated Frog Experiment, when the frog was hanging and the acidic paper was put on its "back". (I am unable to visualize the geometry.) The frog used more than one legs to kick down the paper. The same book mentions a spinal bitch who was procreating and nursing the pups, repeatedly. It seems, indeed, that even the mammal spinal cord is capable enough, if the spinal cord is liberated from under the dominance of the brain. Ref. [11] cites Sherrington having investigated the integration of the spinal cord, and then discusses the "spinal shock". See e.g. [12].

            The spinal shock occurs when/if the connection becomes broken between the spinal cord and the medulla oblongata. But this shock lasts only minutes up to reptiles. In dogs and cats the shock lasts longer and even after not all the spinal cord reflexes come back. Conclusion: the spinal cord is "more autonomous" in fishes & amphibians than in reptiles & mammals; and it is lest autonomous in humans.

            Hence we can go into two directions. First, on spinal animals and on patients undergone stroke one sees "more intensive reflex motions of spinal cord origin" [11]. Hence we can conclude that the brain inhibits the motions, and the rational motion is possible just because of this inhibition. Then, after the spinal shock the decapitated frog must become more active. This is sometimes reported, too; and my own observation is coming soon.

            Of course, the activity is mainly pointless, but this is natural: the highest intellect of the frog (well: it is not high, but it is the highest) has been thrown away. But the frog (minus head) is more active: the usual explanation is that the forebrain inhibits the pointless motions, so when the head is thrown away, the inhibition ceases, so the activity goes up.

            There were lots of experiments with dogs. A dog cannot live even transiently without a head; but the experimenters cut the nerves somewhere in the brain and so they got a series of dogs without connection to the most forward parts of the brain. And lo! bitches without their foremost brain could nurse their kids as told in [11]. Dogs with some foremost parts of their brains cut down but not the not so foremost ones could not learn some tricks but otherwise they seemed normal (they ate, walked &c.). By this way a partial decapitation is achieved: the dog's Mind is split. A more primitive part remains coupled with the Body, while the part of the highest intellect becomes detached from the Body; to my knowledge nobody ever tried to determine how this part worked after detachment.

            The French decapitated thousands in 1791-92, and some of them were intellectuals. There is a story that somebody asked his servant to stand near to the guillotine and to try to communicate with the detached head. I cannot easily check the case because after c. 1905 the French intelligentsia took purely the viewpoint of the decapitators, so now the topic is handled with caution. But we know that the brain remains c. 5 minutes unhurt after the stop of the heart, so a brief communication with the head is not impossible; on the other hand the decapitated body still kicks a few times &c. So our case differs from the frog's one only in degree.

            Now, on 11^th October, 1997 I got a stroke. It was, of course, hemilateral, and again, of course, in the left brain, as expected at physicists (told a female physician some weeks later). However for my right side it was as near to a decapitated human, as it is possible and still reversible.

            Now, it is generally believed that the stroke means (hemilateral) "paralysis". The question is (should be): what does this "paralysis" mean? Within hours my experiments demonstrated that I could make my right hand move; but it did not feel. Or rather: "I" did not feel it feeling, where "I" stands for the conscious part of my neocortex. (But I was not able to make my right leg to move. It was in cramp, and remained so for 2 weeks.) Of course I knew the frog & dog experiments so I concluded that the motor center was unaffected but the feeling center was "under blood flood". So I was "partially decapitated" on the left of my brain. This is not good, but a possibility to learn something.

            Indeed, my right arm & hand was not paralysed; in fact my right side had more tendency to move, as the frog after decapitation. I left the hospital at the end of January, and collected some more experiences. E.g. on full buses my fellow passengers, of course, had lots of contacts with my rump. Without stroke repeated contacts have two interpretations. In a not too densely packed environment they may predict aggression, so you are cautious/nervous. On the other hand, on a densely packed bus they are probably accidental, so then one simply ignores them. However only my forebrain knows that I am on a full bus, so ignore. Now, the muscles were continuously moving on my right side. Well, this is natural (told I to myself): my left brain is not yet at full performance. So it cannot inhibit the reflex motions generated by my spinal chord. So my muscles are kicking: let them.

            But the spinal chord is segmented. As far as I was able to decide, some muscles kicked while some others not (or only weakly); but it was not easy to decide this while standing in a full bus.

            However another observation was sure. For more weeks my right leg was almost without any feeling between knee and ankle; but not below the ankle and above the knee.

            Now, was then my right lower leg a part of my Self-Conscience?

            This is a weak suggestion for the existence of Level 2 in humans: some well-defined parts of the body are temporarily out of the Conscience of Level 3 while obviously they are there. I published my experiences in a journal called "Harmadik szem", so "Third Eye" in 5 parts in March-July, 1998. Physicians often have problems communicating with patients after a stroke; but I could, of course, communicating with myself even in the worst hours.

            Of course, this is a rather weak indication. So the excursion is over, my medication story is over, and now let us see the evolutional history of the kidneys.

6. E PLURIBUS UNUM, OR: SIC ITUR AD ASTRA

            The USA is the unique part of 50 States; and, it seems, Cephalochordata cannot build spaceships. So much about the title.

            It seems that Amphioxus, the living Cephalochordata, has no brain, or if it has, it is very, very rudimentary. The central nervous system is the spinal cord: at the very anterior end there is a slight broadening. But it is practically a spinal cord everywhere, along the notochord. This notochord spans the whole length of the Amphioxus (for that Cephalochordata; really there is no head).

            But the spinal chord is segmented (in all Vertebrata). This can be understood from ontogeny [3]; this is either a signal that originally the Archae-Cephalochordata were colonies, or not. I prefer the first horn of the alternative and some arguments can be found in [3]. However just now only that is important that the central nervous system consists of a lot of similar parts which are quite autonomous.

            Autonomous; but not from the brain. There is no brain. They are individually autonomous: do not disturb too much each other. Ten Cate performed some experiments [11], [13].

            An Amphioxus is too small & delicate to be pricked by needles. Ten Cate used horsehair, and recognised that the Amphioxus does not react well if taken from the sand of the bottom. So he pricked them in the sand with horsehair, and observed that if the prick was weak, only the neighbourhood of the contact point reacted. Of course, the Amphioxus took wavy form, because the contact point tried to move away.

            However, for stronger pricks a larger part of the animal reacted. If we do not want to make any conclusion, then we may call the phenomenon "decremental propagation" in the spinal cord, and that is correct. However by other words, for weak excitation only the contacted segment reacts, for stronger ones the neighbours as well, and for strong ones a substantial part of Amphioxus reacts "as if it were one animal".

            Well, it is one animal, in some sense. That is just how a Confederation is seen from outside.

            Amphioxus is a Chordata: clearly a kin of ours, but the Point of Divergence from our lineage is at Upper Precambrian. In the Cambrian Burgess Shale a cephalochordate was found, named Pikaia, but surely our lineage was already separate at 564 My [14].

            On our separate lineage the most archaic living animals are the Cyclostomata~Agnatha; only those names are already out of fashion, because it is probable that he group is polyphyletic. I would rather avoid the brand new names because Hyperotreti and Hyperoartia are too similar to each other not to confuse. So I call the first group Myxinomorphi and the second Petromyzontomorphi, from the most familiar members. However we should rather distinguish 3 groups, because larval Petromyzontiformes, the Ammocoetes, are quite different. (Myxini do not have larval stages.) The English name for the first group is hagfish, for the second lamprey, and I am still unable to find a common English name for the larval stage. (I know its Magyar name; the Ammocoetes was a popular "fish" on the Hungarian Plains before 1880; people ate them with pasta.)

            It seems that hagfishes diverged somewhat earlier from our lineage than lampreys [15]; but see [16]. Hagfishes seem "more primitive" than lampreys do; but evolution is not always equally fast on different lineages. True, the Myxini do not have vertebrae, so they should not be called Vertebrata, except if they lost them secondarily, which we do not know.

            However, we know something else. Hox genes are good to organise a bilateral body anterior-posteriorly. Drosophyla (not on our lineage, being a protostomate) has 9 Hoxes, Amphioxus 15. Now hagfishes and lampreys have two sets of Hoxes, and all Gnathostomata has at least 4 [15] (some teleosts have 7 or 8). Now, you can define body regions trickier with 2 sets, and even more so with 4. So we do expect less homogeneity, more different parts for hagfishes & lampreys than for lancelets, but then also more different ones for fishes & us than for hagfishes & lampreys. But greater differences mean greater specialisation of the parts too, and then they cannot be as autonomous as with smaller specialisation. E pluribus unum: from the confederation of the 13 founder colonies the present USA. From a Pikaia- or Amphioxus-like LCA fishes & we.

            But then we may learn something from Myxinoformes & Petromyzoniformes. And Ammocoetes looks like something between lampreys & lancelets in evolution; as usual, because larvae, embryos &c. generally mimic an earlier stage. Ontogeny is the recapitulation of phylogeny; thus spake Haeckel. He was not completely true, but even then...

            If we (say, 590 My ago) were a confederation of small proto-chordata , then for origin, we are tertiary animals. (Amphioxus seems to be such [3], and the Ammocoetes is too similar to Amphioxus for accidents.) But then there still can be some trace, somewhere, of Level 2.

            As for the other sentence in the title, it seems that for conscience confederate organisations can live conveniently, but they are not too tricky. Maybe the reason is that they have to make argumentations before complicated decisions. If this is indeed the reason, we do not expect Volvoces, Amphioxi and such to build spaceships; while we can do it. We return to the question in Chap. 8.

            And now back to kidneys!

7. FROM PRONEPHROS TO METANEPHROS

            Lots of things are called "kidneys" and some of them are even not homologous. However many animals secrete fluids which is mainly water. The organ doing this may be called loosely "kidney".

            Vertebrata came from water: it seems that originally from freshwater (lakes). So the main function of the kidney originally was not to excrete water but retaining the "salts". The kidney gave back more or less pure water to the environment. Of course some byproducts of solution were good to excrete too if possible: Evolution surely invented more and more tricky osmotic membranes which, however, cannot be investigated at fossils.

            The most important poisonous byproduct was of course NH₃, ammonia. While nitrogen is often the bottleneck to life, in the form of ammonia it is dangerous. So in aqueous environment the kidney excretes ammonia with water.

            On land this is not convenient. There is no continuous dilution in water, so the fluid must be kept in a specific organ for a while, and then expulsed in regular periods. So the poisonous ammonia might do harm. Land vertebrates took the path to form carbamide. Its simplified formula is CO(NH₂)₂, but it is more appropriate to write it as (H₂N)(CO)(NH₂) to indicate the symmetry of the molecule. The carbamide is much less poisonous than ammonia.

            Now one could write a reaction

CO₂ + 2NH₃ = (H₂N)(CO)(NH₂) + H₂O

but directly this reaction needs 150 atm pressure and 160 C° temperature. However the liver can do it, with enzymes. (This single and very simplified sentence stands instead of a monograph.)

            Now, amongst Vertebrata 3 different "plans" of "kidneys" can be found, and maybe a fourth is characteristic for Acrania = Cephalochordata (Amphioxus), which are either the most outlying Vertebrata, or the nearest kin. The 3 (4) types are:

(archinephros >) pronephros > mesonephros > metanephros

where > stands for the evolutionary direction. But the different "kidneys" do not seem homologous. Often the remainder of a previous "stage" survives, and takes new task (an example will come soon).

            The archinephros is not a compact organ and seems to be characteristic to Acrania. The tubules are segmentally placed. The Acrania kidneys are paired, and the tubules excrete into the peribranchial cavity. This cavity is on the ventral side, along cca. half of the animal.

            The pronephros is sometimes called "head kidney", because in recent animals it is located just behind the head. It is segmented. Now, the pronephros is the larval/embryonal kidney of "fishes", but "in the advanced fishes" after the larval stage it ceases to work as kidney. The literature is equivocal: sometimes it is told that the pronephros works in adult Cyclostomatha=Agnatha, sometimes it is told that it works even in "some" teleosts, but sometimes it is declared that it works only in larval Cyclostomatha. Surely the explanation of the obscure statements is that extant Cyclostomatha (no single English name: they are the lamprey & the hagfish) appear in 3 different forms:

            1) Adult Petromyzon & Lampetra. They have the tendency to attach to fishes, but are not truly parasites.

            2) Larval Petromyzon & Lampetra. They had a Linnean genus name, Ammocoetes, when they were still believed to be a lower grade. They live active lives.

            3) Myxine. They are called sometimes parasites.

They represent 2 branches independent from Late Precambrian, and simply are the remnants of an archaic grade.

            The mesonephros takes over in most fishes and in amphibians in adult life. Also, the mesonephros is the embryonal kidney in amniotes (reptiles, birds, mammals), and it is told that in atherian mammals it still works as kidney for a short time after hatching. In male mammals a part of it then develops into the vas deferens. The mesonephros is segmented.

            The metanephros is "the kidney" of adult amniotes. It is not segmented.

            So it seems that originally each segment had its own archinephros, and up to extant amphibians the adult "kidney" still keeps the segmental structure. Also, it is not easy to understand why the different "kidneys" appeared: this is not the evolution of one organ.

            Surely the newer and newer "kidneys" are not connected with the old and new chemistry of urine. The ammonia-carbamide shift happened at leaving water. Now it is a majority opinion that extant Tetrapoda are monophyletic and the LCA "left water" at the Fraasnian-Famennian boundary, in Late Devonian, c. 362.5 Mya [17], and the adventurous LCA was Ichtyostega, Acanthostega or a very close kin. Then came a length of amphibious lifestyle, and then the would-be Amphibia and would-be Amniota separated "on land". (They spent a lot of time in water, but they were able to transport themselves on land and survived for a while the atmospheric environment.) Now, carbamide synthesis must have started in Latest Devonian or Earliest Carboniferous; but in the liver. Of course, a simultaneous evolution was needed "in the kidney",  I think still in the mesonephros; but that was only some trivial change in osmotic membranes. Maybe, but this is only a guess, the development of a brand new type of kidney, the metanephros, was needed because of the scarcity of water on land.

            However, look: If I were an amphibian, my segmented kidney could not have stopped. Namely, the parts of a segmented organ have quite autonomies. If something happens, a part stops, but other parts continue, so the loss of function is only gradual. We (meaning reptiles, birds & mammals together) exchanged safety with efficiency. Our metanephros is much more efficient; but if stops...

Aside

                But I have two metanephroi! And they stopped simultaneously! It was unexpected and miraculous! And nobody knows, why! (I have a guess. but that you would not believe, and that is irrelevant for or against our tertiary structure.)

Aside ends

8. SEGMENTED KIDNEYS IN UNITARY BODIES!

            The exclamation mark is for attention. There are interesting points here.

1) Safety vs. efficiency vs. trickiness

            If I had mesonephroi, I would have not got into hospital. Some segments may have stopped; but the others not, and I would have not recognised the problem. After some time the dysfunction either would have ceased (nobody knows the reason of the dysfunction, anyways), or not. If not, then now my working ability would be now reduced. There is practically no redundancy in mammals. No substantial regeneration (remember the tails of lizards), no segmented kidney (although still the organ is paired, but that did not help me), no new teeth in adulthood (lizard teeth grow and regrow continuously) and so on. On the other hand, the mammal way of life is better, until it lasts. And we can have specialised physicians, medicine industry & such, which is not possible not only for clearly tertiary lancelets but even not for amphibians of segmented mesonephroi either. And it seems it is much more difficult to build spaceships with a central nervous system of equal parts than with a specialised forebrain. But remember the decapitated frog: the spinal cord is much more tricky than people generally believe.

            This observation may help us to understand the confusion about social principles in the last quarter millennium. Liberté, egalité, fraternité! is a nice slogan; but it is rather 3 slogans, and if you want to follow all of them simultaneously, problems will arise. E.g. liberté means free competition, which then undermines egalité. From another angle, among all chordates the ones with most egalité are some colonial urochordates and Amphioxus. In Amphioxus dozens of segments have their own kidney, gonad and primitive eyes, while even in Ammocoetes the parts (Level 2) are mere cogs in the machinery of the Whole (they still have their own segments of the kidney, which is then the pronephros). Has this Evolution been Good or Bad?

            But this would be Philosophy. Biological evolution is governed by Survival (of Bauplans, lifestyles &c.). Our way of life seems to be the most successful; I think, amongst all animal species humanity has the biggest summed mass. The evolution led to us heavily subjugated the parts on Levels 2 & 3; and it is successful. Still, Amphioxus and Rhabdopleura normani live too, and in the latter the only connection of the individuals is a stolon, so that a Level 3 animal is obviously a loose confederation of Level 2 individua. Simply: their way is viable, but we were even more successful. Sic itur ad astra.

2) Hierarchy of Consciences

            Another interesting point is the meaning of Conscience. As it was told in Chapter 3, in an earthworm there are 3 levels of Existence. On Level 1, that of the cells, Death and Birth are continuous, and I think the Mind on Level 3, "the earthworm Mind" does not even register it. However the segments, Level 2, seem more autonomous than in anything on the deuterostome branch above Urochordata. (When I speak about an earthworm Mind, I do not intend to  state anything about the intelligence, mentality, soul &c. of an earthworm. Simply: there is a supreme center or network making decisions for the earthworm, anything be the quality of this carrier of Mind.) Level 2 beings in a Level 3 one may also die; see the critical segments of an earthworm cut into halves. Is this Death?

            It is easy to say No; or Not Really. Then think about a State, Nation or such. As it is usual to say: the good soldier dies that the Nation live. You may or may not agree with the slogan, but even if you do, still this remains a true Death.

            Now let us go to the highest level of Vertebrata. The Case of the Decapitated Frog is a warning that the problem is not simple. As for Death see the next Point. As for Existence, the Brain governs all the Body in vertebrates, but, as the Case of the Decapitated Frog demonstrates, the Spinal Cord governs it too. Without a head, so a Brain, the Spinal Cord takes responsibility for the whole remaining Body; but in a frog it can do it only on a poor quality level. Now, Amphioxus cannot be decapitated, not having any head, but an Ammocoetes can be. It would be interesting to compare the qualities of performance of a whole and a decapitated Ammocoetes.

            Parkinson summarized the analogon of the gradual victory of Brain in a study of the constitutional evolution of England [18]. In this process newer and newer governing assemblies appear, namely when the previous one grows too large, but the older ones do not vanish. In our human brain McLean distinguished 3 consecutive layers (Reptile Complex; the Old Mammal Brain, roughly the limbic system; the New Mammal Brain, the outermost layer of neocortex, which in itself is double, left/right) [19]; and "behind of these" there is still the Spinal Cord. In England/Great Britain and Northern Ireland it seems that the sequence was

Council of the Crown (House of Lords), 1066 > Lords of the King’s Council, 1257 > Privy Council, b. 1540 > Cabinet Council (junto), 1615 > Cabinet, 1740 > Inner Cabinet, 1939.

Parkinson states that the dominance struggle between the Cabinet and the Inner Cabinet is still open; and this is only the governing body. For centuries there is a House of Commons behind, making the laws and checking. And still the House of Lords (the first real governing body until XIII^th c.) can delay a new law influence somewhat the Government, and the Privy Council still has some influence although I have not the slightest idea what kind of. A decapitated frog teaches us about things political too.

3) Lives & Deaths on Different Levels

            As told, there are at least 3 levels of lives in an earthworm. In cellular level it is no problem for us to understand the situation. Cells die and new cells are born "but the Holy Earthworm lives forever". It does not live forever; but its lifetime is indeed much longer than that of its cells. (The quotation marks ar for analogy with nations from the Age of National States upwards, c. from Louis XIV.) And with or without social analogons, in the most Level 2 & Level 3 animals the cells are "domesticated" well enough. While Dr. Lysenko was not right telling that carrots too densely planted commit voluntary suicides for the benefit of the community of carrots, this erroneous conclusion came from the fact that most carrots died and from the postulate "No struggle within the species” [20]); the postulate was wrong, and I think no "community of carrots" exists in any sense. However the earthworm or human do exist on the supreme level, and in normal situations there is practically no struggle for life or competition within the organism. Exceptions are of borderline nature, and are interesting. One example is cancer, but then the cell underwent serious changes. Another is the autoimmune dysfunctions when the organism attacks unnecessarily its own cells; and then the organism is seriously harmed too. Finally, sperms compete in the female; but there they are not "in their own" organism.

            So cells already have forgotten that they are Level 1 animals within the earthworm or in the human; their purpose is to work as tiny cogs. Level 2 parts, the segments of the earthworm, would be interesting targets of investigations, but it is difficult to understand a segment of an earthworm; and for our lineage the Amphioxus (or maybe Ammocoetes) is the last organism with anything similar to an autonomous segment. Here human societies may give analogies. In the 90's the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia deceased via dissolving into parts. In all the 3 cases the successors are able to exist, so surely they existed previously, but not on the highest level; and the transitional problems show analogies to the spinal shock in vertebrates, and to the (undescribed) process when the successors of an earthworm cut into halves “regenerate”. In the second half of XIX^th century and in the most of the XX^th almost every intellectual school regarded the geographical growth and progressing centralisation of states as, quoting Generalissimo Stalin for a clear expression, "the Wheel of History, whose rotation cannot be reversed"; and then at the end of 1992 both Lower Houses of the Parliament of Czechoslovakia (I mean, the Czech and the Slovak ones) accepted the Dissolution, without struggles & so. True, the Upper House did not accept, so according to the Czechoslovak Constitution the decision is invalid; but then the Bohemian Prime Minister told that the electricity, water and heating will stop in the building of the Upper House on 31^st December, so the senators did not assemble anymore. Bohemia & Slovakia have grown the missing parts and now there are two successors. (And observe that Slovakia was integral part of Hungary for a millennium, so she is more a successor of Hungary than of Czechoslovakia; and note that present Hungary is another successor of that Hungary, too.) A decapitated frog may give a slight insight into autonomies because the Spinal Chord is segmental; but it is not easy to communicate with a decapitated frog. But maybe we can understand something about partial deaths and splitting individualities by investigating decerebrated mammals.

            That is not decapitation, but cutting the nerves; and it was performed at various anterior-posterior positions [11]. "Highly", so really anteriorly decerebrated cats & dogs seem almost normal, but very, very dumb. This is, because the lower centres participate in the governance of the Body, but the highest ones do not anymore. However now, contrary to the decapitation, the highest parts of the Brain do not die! The Body nurses the cut-away parts too. Then there may remain a separate Mind there, with whom nobody tried to communicate. (Of course it would not be easy.) I think, in humans this Mind would go mad after some time; but in dog; in mouse; in lamprey?

            At the end of October, 1997 I lay in a hospital room, and I was cold. But no part of me was felt cold. So for a while I told myself that it is a hallucination. But the feeling of being cold remained, so I sat up; and then I saw my right knee up and of course out of the cover. (As I told, in that time "I" did not feel the majority of my right leg.) Then everything became clear. "I" did not feel the neighbourhood of my right knee, so "I" did not feel any part of me in cold. However my thermal centers, being in the Old Mammal Brain, detected that my blood is somewhat cooler than should be; they worked to compensate (shivering &c.) and my Conscious got the nonlocalised and obscure signal from below.

            OK, but what to do? I gave the command to my right leg to go down, but my right leg was not under the governance of my Conscious, so “I” was unsuccessful. I might have tried to move my right leg with my hands; but that is a kind of acrobatics in a hospital bed. And there was a simpler solution; in that time I already have read Refs. [10] & [11]. My left hemisphere is somewhat influenced by the stroke; OK (not really OK but can I do anything against?); but my spinal cord works well. So I commanded my left leg to kick my right one; it will not hurt since "I" do not feel it. After 3 or 4 kicks my right leg went down to avoid the kicks; a simple spinal reflex. Then I pulled the covers over, and slept back.

            Morale: Knowledge is Power. As for the Real Essence of Our Body, Mind, Soul, Conscience, Individuality &c.: who knows? I am not a philosopher. But two points are clear. First: our Individuality is not so simple as we believe. And, second: a physicist is detached enough from common sense feelings to command his left foot to kick savagely his right leg if he is sure that he will never feel the pain because that leg is transiently out of connection with his Conscience.

9. NOTES ON POLITOLOGY

            An old, but often neglected, idea in the European thinking is the analogy between the Body Politic and the Human Body, going back to Locke & Hobbes.

            We do not know for sure if we are tertiary (I believe it, but maybe you are not interested in my beliefs), and even if we are, the little wormy constituents of Amphioxus are hard to empathize with. This is even more so with the segments of an earthworm. So let us go one level up; let us look for bodies built up from individuals whom we believe to understand more or less. Look for quaterniaries.

            The automatic answer is that they do not exist. And now let us go back to Marais [2].

            Marais tells that the "true individuum" of the termites is not the termite insect, but the termite hill, possessing a "group-soul". Of course, being a physicist, I do not know what is a soul, and I have little interest in the notion, but then in the 6^th chapter of his book [2] (I use a Hungarian edition, translated from English, not the Afrikaans original text; the chapter title is something "The Composite Animal") Marais turns to similes, and that I understand. He tells that our body consists of different organs working for common purposes. A governing principle radiates from a center, and the organs do not have independent goals. And so on.

            Now, surely, we (human individuals) do have goals and we have free wills (or at least we feel as if we had); we do not know, of course, if our kidneys or heart have, but if they have, these goals are either very well harmonized or they are strongly atrophised, because our kidneys generally cooperate quite well with our other organs, and do not try to harm the Whole. (My incident may have been the rare exception.) And then Marais states 9 Theses. Theses 1-3 tell that the termite insect (a tertiary animal, a fact not mentioned by Marais) has "no free will", his operations are governed from outside of it, the governing force seems to radiate from the chamber of the Queen Termite, and the force is weakening with distance. He was not able to detect the "radiation". [Now we know that it is pheromones; but this is immaterial here]. Thesis 4 states that the governing force stops if the Queen dies; and it weakens if the Queen is harmed.

            So far this is not Philosophy; Marais performed lots of experiments, made possible, no doubt, by th sad fact that his young and beloved wife died and then he was hating Humanity so spending much time in Nature.

            Now, Thesis 5 states that the termite hill is a composite animal. This Thesis will be dealt in greater details. You may or may not accept the idea, because this is not a fact, but an interpretation, depending on definitions. But if we accept Thesis 5 for a moment for the sake of argumentation, then we can shortly finish with Theses 6-9.

            Thesis 6 states that the composite animal descended from quite ordinary flying insects; the formation of the composite animal is a late evolution. Thesis 7 claims a parallel between the evolution of the termite hill and other composite animals as e.g. "the mammals". Thesis 8 states that the mammals are composite animals formed originally from specialised individuals, cca. organs. [I will suggest later a somewhat more complicated picture because surely a kidney is not the descendant of one segment of the proto-vertebrate still similar to the proto-chordate Pikaia, but now let us pass, taking Thesis 8 not exactly literally.] Finally, in Thesis 9 Marais tells that the process of formation of composite animals goes in Nature even now.

            No doubt, the crucial Thesis is the fifth. The first 4 are experimentally based, Thesis 6 is very, very probable independently the definition of a composite animal, and 7-9 follow if we accept Thesis 5.

            Now, Thesis 5 is short. It states that the termite hill can be regarded as an individual, composite animal, only it cannot move. I think, as a physicist, that anything can/may be regarded as almost anything, so we cannot prove/disprove whether something is or is not a composite animal. However it may be a useful view or not. And if Thesis 1 is true, so the individual termite is governed from "outside" (indeed rather "from above", from "next level"), then the behaviour of the termite hill cannot be understood from tertiary, "termite", level.

            Let us leave still Thesis 8 at it is. Marais then states that the "warrior-termites", quite different from "workers" even for first glance, are the analogons of our leukocytes.

            Chapter 7 of [2] deals with the death of the termite hill. If a hill remains without termites after some time it deteriorates, as if the human cadaver does after human death. In later chapters Marais deals with the strange instincts and the strange lack of some instincts of the termites. When the outer shell of the hill is harmed, the warriors attack the invader without any obvious presence of the instinct of self-preservation. Some warriors remain outside while the workers wall up the damage. The warriors will die outside: the termite warriors cannot take solid food, and their fluid food is produced within the termite hill. Still, the warriors give their life for the hill (although it would be not too difficult to retire when the workers diminished the hole just to the warriors' size). Also, there is no working instinct of procreation within the hill: although it seems that not all workers are female among termites (as they are amongst ants), surely except the Queen & King everybody in asexual.

            So: while a randomly selected termite seems to be a quite ordinary insect, in fact it is asexual & is without the instinct of self-preservation; the warriors cannot eat outside the hill, but the workers are not too self-sustaining either, and the queen cannot move. So a termite in himself or herself dies; the maximum lifetime of as warrior is a week [2]; I do not know that of a worker, but it cannot be much longer; and only the royal pair can procreate but their offspring die without the workers. So individual termites could not form a biological species.

            This is similar, even if in lesser extent, for other social insects as ants & bees. However, in even smaller extent, the procreation is limited amongst mammals as well. It is reported that in wolf-herds the rule is the procreation of alpha individuals only. And amongst humans the practice of asexual communities is well known for millennia, as, e.g., such religious orders as vestal virgines, monk & nuns, or Buddhist cloisters. And the present human population could not survive a year without cities, specialised professions, supermarkets and transport companies, although a much lower population (~1 person/sq. mile) is possible in groups of a few families. Humans are social animals, although not at the degree of termites. As far as we can reconstruct back, humans & direct ancestors lived in groups, as far as we know, in the order of 30.

            Marais tells that termite warriors are the analogons of leukocytes; and I think, he is right, at least in allegoric sense. However, he regards the workers as analogons of the red blood cells, and here the analogy is not good. In the mammal blood the red "cells" have no nucleus, so they are simply carriers of the oxygen. Indeed, the blood in general carries chemicals, thrombocytes &c.

            But good or bad analogons, the termite hill is far from the organisation we see in the human body. The "community of leukocytes", i.e. warriors is not an organ; it is not an organ even in us. And the termite hill does not have liver, stomach or kidney, even if it has symbiotic fungus colonies which, under workers' ministrations, perform some functions of our stomach.

            Amphioxus, and the analogies of insects, suggest that most of our specialised  organs evolved either from groups of neighbouring segments or from the separation of the specialised cells of the segments. One example is the archinephros>pronephros>mesonephros>metanephros sequence, where the first stage is represented in each individual segment and only the last is fully localised, another is the head, which is clearly segmented in insects (having exactly 6 segments), does not yet exist in Amphioxus, and may seem segmented in Ammocoetes.

            But Marais demonstrated that the popular comparison of Human Body and Body Politic is more than a metaphore. Social animals start to build up a higher level above themselves; and in some hundreds of Mys this process may be completed; or may stop somewhere.

            Until a point the development of the higher organisational level is even reversible. Wolves are more dependent on society than humans, but dogs, biologically the same on species level, are not. Dogs look like quite independent biological individuals, e.g. their reproduction is not governed by a canine group (and in traditional countryside communities not by humans as well). It seems that termites are already beyond Point of No Return.

            Now, human society is clearly the "beginning" of a higher level, and in the last 400 years the problem was amply discussed, using Biology as a simile. But the idea goes back to 2500 years.

            In the first states, say in Egypt and the small Mesopotamian city-states, the problem seemed undiscussed, if you are interested why, go to the Appendix, otherwise let us continue at 2500 years ago.

            Menenius Agrippa was Roman Consul in 503 BC. Now we are in 494. A few years after dethroning Tarquinius Superbus, there are internal struggles in Rome. The plebeians demand some rights. They have no representation in the Senate, they cannot apply for offices; they cannot marry patricians; & so on. At the end the plebeians secede: they leave the Urbs, and go up the Mons Sacer, the Sacred Hill, beyond River Anio. The patricians do not want to live without the plebeians, they are ready to give them more definite legal place in the society (not equal status, rather separated, in Afrikaans apartheid), but first the speaking terms should be restored. Menenius Agrippa makes his famous speech on Mons Sacer, preserved by Livy [21] (Book 2, in Chap. 32). Translations differ so let us see first the original text; in the next Paragraph [] stands for numbering parts of the text, not References.

[9] placuit igitur oratorem ad plebem mitti Menenium Agrippam, facundum uirum et quod inde oriundus erat plebi carum. is intromissus in castra prisco illo dicendi et horrido modo nihil aliud quam hoc narrasse fertur: [10] tempore quo in homine non ut nunc omnia in unum consentiant, sed singulis membris suum cuique consilium, suus sermo fuerit, indignatas reliquas partes sua cura, suo labore ac ministerio uentri omnia quaeri, uentrem in medio quietum nihil aliud quam datis uoluptatibus frui; [11] conspirasse inde ne manus ad os cibum ferrent, nec os acciperet datum, nec dentes quae acciperent conficerent. hac ira, dum uentrem fame domare uellent, ipsa una membra totumque corpus ad extremam tabem uenisse.  [12] inde apparuisse uentris quoque haud segne ministerium esse, nec magis ali quam alere eum, reddentem in omnes corporis partes hunc quo uiuimus uigemusque, diuisum pariter in uenas maturum confecto cibo sanguinem.  [13] comparando hinc quam intestina corporis seditio similis esset irae plebis in patres, flexisse mentes hominum.

The text given here is without capitals at sentence heads, distinction of U and V and other such newfangled humanist ideas. Foster [22] translates it as:

They [the patricians] therefore decided to send as an ambassador to the commons Agrippa Menenius, an eloquent man and dear to the plebeians as being one of themselves by birth. On being admitted to the camp he is said merely to have related the following apologue, in the quaint and uncouth style of that age: In the days when mans members did not all agree among themselves, as is now the case, but had each its own ideas and a voice of its own, the other parts thought it unfair that they should have the worry an the trouble and the labour of providing everything for the belly, while the belly remained quietly in their midst with nothing to do but to enjoy the good things which they bestowed upon it; they therefore conspired together that the hands should carry no food to the mouth, nor the mouth accept anything that was given it, nor the teeth grind up what they received. While they sought in this angry spirit to starve the belly into submission, the members themselves and the whole body were reduced to the utmost weakness. Hence it had been clear that even the belly had no idle task to perform, and was no more nourished than it nourished the rest, by giving out to all parts of the body that by which we live and thrive, when it has been divided equally amongst the veins and is enriched with digested food -that is the blood. Drawing a parallel from this to show how like was the internal dissension of the bodily members to the anger of the plebs against the Fathers, he prevailed upon the minds of his hearers.

Were I a scholar, not a scientist, the translation would be ready. However already the first sentence demonstrates that the translation is rather free. Namely the translation tells that Menenius Agrippa was a born plebeian, in which case he hardly could have been consul 9 years earlier, told us by Livy himself. I am not arguing for Livy’s absolute reliability. But I do not believe him contradicting himself within a few pages. So let us check the text about the origin of the ex-consul; and the result is that the Latin text does not say anything about the plebeian birth of the consul: instead it states that he was quod inde oriundus erat plebi carum, i.e. because of his origin dear to the plebs. This could be almost anything, e.g. that his family was in good relations with the leaders of the commoners. Note that the Hungarian edition [23] is correct.

            The subsequent sentences seem to be not problematic; the "belly" is of course the stomach. So Menenius Agrippa tells that

            In very ancient times the human body had not yet been fully integrated as today it is, and all organs still had their own opinia, own voices, all started to protest that they were tiring & working for the stomach, who does not do anything else than enjoy the fruit of their works. So they agreed that the hand would not carry the food to the mouth, the mouth would not accept it, the teeth would not chew it. In their fury they wanted to teach the stomach with hunger, but then the whole body started to starve. Then they understood that the stomach is also working for the whole body, giving back the nourishment to the members via the veins distributing the product of the digested food, the blood.

            Well, the story in itself would not have been enough; but the story plus the introduction of the office of popular tribunes was. Menenius Agrippa might or might not believe his story, but this is Marais' picture 2425 years earlier only Marais’ timescale is much longer.

A generation after Menenius Agrippa Empedocles of Acragas also thought that members or organs appeared first from Chaos: they tried various combinations, some successful, some not. But 1) the Roman politician had the priority before the Greek philosopher; and 2) Empedocles seems not to mention the common benefit.

            With the end of Ancient Times the societies simplify. At the beginning of High Middle Ages c. 1075 the peak of Politology is the triadic Society: oratores, bellatores, laboratores [24].  What is really interesting: nobody goes beyond this trialistic view until French Revolution and slightly after. French agitators speak about States or Classes: The first is Church, the Second is Nobility, the third is Commoners, as if a noble of Robe could easily substitute a noble of Sword, or a merchant of Bordeaux would be interchangeable with a fisherman of Britanny.

            The XIX^th century is not the age of complicated theoretical models of societies in Europe (meaning here the Continent). The reason is simple, as we see it from the XXI^st. From c. 1750 upwards the new models are elaborated by Enlightment; in 1792 they would result in mass murders of the Top Level of the society (the so-called Ancient Régime) in France; elsewhere come the Napoleonic Wars. However the attempts are not exactly successful: New France meets with resounding defeat (on one hand, from Great Britain formed partly in the Napoleonic Wars, and on the other, from lesser Powers dominated by the Anciernt Régime. (This is not a proper historical analysis, and definitely not something judging facts of history from the perspective of should be/have been, but a tale about the event from purely the viewpoint of Individua in Society.) Then from 1815 to the end of the century there are struggles everywhere on the Continent for the Governing Power. Now, in such situations the new aspirants emphasize the homogeneity of the Underprivileged People. Complicated and naturally evolved models with a multiplicity of coexistent different groups could be visualized by the Privileged; but they are not too active in elaboration of models.

            The struggle has two phases, even if not totally separated. The first phase is "burgeoisie vs. Ancient Régime". In this struggle the old leading elements argue with "natural order", cca. Conservativism, a pseudo-biological idea about Society as an Organism, having grown in a natural way, necessary to be conserved. They might use a description with separate organs (as Menenius Agrippa) or separate segments (as traditional regions, linguistic groups &c.) but they do it poorly. The main reasons may be that 1) they do not like Evolutionary Biology; and 2) they generally believe in Divine Rights of Kings, so in a centralised State. Against them the "burgeoisise" wields still the intellectual weapon of a Third Order of the Underprivileged, Une and Indivisible, without structure. And then comes the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

            There K. Marx visualise the situation in the near future, when "burgeoisie", the "capitalists" will have won against Ancient Régime. Then there will exist a thin layer of the New Privileged, and under them a vast body of homogeneous Proletariat, really without anything, not only privileges but property as well. Of course, in long range the Proletariat will win, and build a New Society from unspecified induvidua. (The ideal is the individuum changing his activities even in a day as hunter, artist &c.) If biological similes could be used (and they are just coming into fashion), then the simile of such a Society is not the Human Body, but colonies of cells, as e.g. Volvox globator.

            Then comes First World War in 1914. Just before it seems as if the "Burgeoisie" finally defeated the "Ancient Régime"; but in 1918 the future seems grim, after 4 years of intensive warfare and civil losses  comparable only with those of the Thirty Years War. So maybe Marx was a prophet, the existing order of things must be put down, and this is the time to start with the New Order of unspecified individua in a structureless Society.

            Against these mass movements the Liberals shrink, and a new "traditionalist" power appears using a potpourry of Law & Order, quasibiologic arguments, and The Great Man. During this struggle one side deliberately refrains itself from using biological similes ("social Darwinism is a course there), while the other side sometimes goes back to Ancient Régime catchwords of Society as Natural Organism (syndicalists), sometimes uses Biology for slogans as Homogeneous Blood/Origin/Species vs. others. The struggles result in the Second World War, horrible even than the First. Then come the years we can remember.

            West from the Channel the evolution is different. Great Britain feels the European social trends, but order is maintained, and the complete defeat of the Ancient Régime does not happen until the end of the Second World War. It is interesting to note that H. G. Wells, the famous socialist thinker of the first half of XX^th century in England definitely declares [25] that a dichotomic "class structure" is not true for the Past (for Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages he distinguishes as many as 12 "classes", "castes" or "layers", sometimes even with limited autonomy, see App. B), but he believes that the dichotomic structure is just coming into life and will be valid in Near Future.

             In the Commonwealth the tendency is the formation of independent successor States, first not too different from the Mother Country. (so, multiplication by division.) In the USA from 1797 to present you can see something between annelids and insects: the Body of State grows, but the new parts always are organised into new segments; however the influence of supersegmental central power is continuously growing. One would then have expected much "biological" arguments in USA politology; but there are surprisingly little. Of course, staunch Republicans sometimes call Democrat ideals (as e.g. enforced Social Security) as "ant-hill society).

            And now we are at the beginning of XXI^st century. Because of the misconceptions/false tracks of XX^th century the options are not clear and biological analogies are seldom used. But in the minds of people clearly both Benevolent & Mighty State and Individual Liberty are very dear, often synchronously.

10. ONCE MORE ON LIFE AND DEATH

            This Chapter will not have Statements; mainly because present human languages are not proper to formulate them. Instead, I am going to show that "things are not so simple as we believe". Sometimes the problem was mentioned briefly in previous Chapters.

            If we want to preserve any serious meaning of Death, wee must use the term only on irreversible ends of something. So "clinical death" is not death at all; it is the transient stop of hearth activity; it is called "death" only because earlier legal prescriptions often defined death in such a way. Now it is generally out of practice.

            However now the Human Death is generally equated with the Brain Death. The human is legally dead if his brain is dead, so cannot revive anymore.

            Now, this seems to be a direct acceptance of Marais' and Menenius Agrippa's viewpoint: the human is composed of organs, they have separate lives and somewhy Brain is the center of Human Individuality. Note that even this is not true for origin (according to majority opinion we are not tertiaries, according to minority opinions our original secondaries were not the present organs but segments similarly to the annelids), it may (or may not) be a good picture for the present stage of evolution. (As a far but structurally good analogy: our Galaxy is now composed of stars, but was not originally (sorry for the clumsiness of Tenses of Indo-European) built up from stars. There might have been (this here is not a kind of Conditional/Conjunctive, but a lame try to form a Really Remote Past Tense) Primordial Quasistellar Objects at z=5-20 before galaxy formation, and some γ -bursts may come from their collapses (the suspected Massive Stellar Progenitors of Paczynski), but the so far seen farthest/earliest γ-burster is at z=8.2 [26], not significantly before galaxies. Our Galaxy at 1 billion years after Big Bang seems to have been a more or less homogeneous mass of H and He gas, and her stars then were formed via the spiral gravitational ditches [27]. Spontaneous group formation from 2*10¹¹ individual stars is out of question on 13*10⁹ year timescale, and without the ditches spontaneous formation at or below solar mass would be very rare. So not only The Galaxy as a Unit was first, but also She nurtured the stars into life. Still, now She is composed of the stars. Why not a similar process could have taken place in Vertebrata so in humans?

            However, the problem remains even at the Human/Tertiary level. Let us go first again to annelids for clear notions. I told that a halved earthworm regenerates into two earthworms: the original is no more but because of regeneration we cannot say that it has died. If you cut the tail of a lizard, it regenerates; and if you cut a leg, it does too, although generally in a somewhat inferior quality. We surely must not call the original lizard dead; and in earthworms the "only" difference is the two-way regeneration. I do not exactly know what should be said about the original earthworm. Human languages evolved in the last hundred thousand years without annelid perspective, and average humans show no ability to empathize with earthworms.

            We would think that we can handle much more well vertebrates; and indeed we can handle them better, but not quite well, because of the Brain/Spinal Cord dichotomy. In frogs the spinal cord takes over after decapitation, and the frog survives long enough that we can perform complicated enough experiment [8-11]. If we want to keep Common Sense or any seriousness of any human language, we must not call the decapitated frog pausing "a moment as if for reflection" then detaching the disturbing acidic paper dead. It will die later, most probably in the lack of food, not having a mouth to feed itself.

            OK, frog is an amphibian; mammals are different. Indeed, mammals show much less "spinal autonomy". But let us take the famous spinal bitch (references go back into XIXth century; maybe the most convenient is to look at Fulton’s handbopok [28]; the bitch is not decapitated but all nerves cut between the spinal cord and the brain) nurturing her pups. She was clearly not dead. Well, of course we may call her brain-dead; but then it is demonstrated that brain-death is not Death for a dog. And there is a continuum of "decerebrated" dogs/cats (i.e. nerves cut between some more forward and more backward parts of the brain + the spinal cord. The dog seems more and more "normal".

            Maybe we may call them brain-damaged dogs, still not only living but living as dogs even if handicapped. Maybe still laws against animal abuse still defend them (to be clear, the law does not defend them against decerebration if the experiment was licensed for the Good of Humanity, a notion into which a physicist is not too pacticised to enter). But exactly what is a dog? [11] states stat "the higher nervous activity, mind, thinking, formation of notions, and all phenomena considered psychic" may be attributed to the activity of the cortex. This is a viewpoint rational and relatively simple, so good for a physicist. Then what is a decorticised dog? Is a dog really a dog without psychic activity? Anyways, we keep dogs to know us, to love us, to serve us, to make tricks &c. Then a decorticised dog is living, but in essence not living as a dog, so finally not a dog proper.

            So far, so good. But [11] is careful (it is written by biologists & biophysicists, not by Fiends of Canines) and states: "...the dog after being decorticised loses its ability for spontaneous ability for activities and the interest in the external world. (So far so good.) The learned abilities are lost, new abilities cannot be trained, or this is very difficult." (Italics is by me, B.L.) So the tail of the continuum is still here.

            And now we may go to humans. Maybe we should take a stop at Nonhuman Primates; but my knowledge about the proper literature is scant. I have read only statements "even more difficult/even more serious" and such. The statements are generally that "humans generally die not long after the fatal damage of the brain (or even of the cortex)". However note the "generally" and "not long". And after Barnard's heart transposition the ideas became fluid.

            First legal systems substituted the stopping of heart with something lack of EEG signals. But soon it has been observed that spinal cord activity is possible, sometimes for long time, without working brain.

            This is not at all strange, of course, after the stories of decapitated but living frogs, the spinal bitch nurturing her pups & such. Well, now the legal definition of Human Death is generally the death of brain; and this definition is practical. But will this definition be eternal?

            With the developments of Biology the potentialities are almost limitless. Obviously after a while brain tissues will be generated to fix brain damages. So in the future new brain then can be grown for substituting the damaged brain, or the decapitated victim, even if this will not be too practical, because the whole experience of the brain, the whole amount of learned experience stored in the brain is irretrivably lost. But not all of the individual is stored in the brain!

            A small amount (how small?) of the individuum belongs to the learnt behaviour of the spinal chord. What will be in the far future the relation of a human decapitated, brain lost, but spinaql cord preserved and then supported by a cloned, new, but still almost blank new brain to the original one? Will we call the original "dead"? Then what will be the new, fixed one?

            I do not want to wear borrowed plumes. The problem was raised by Bob Shaw's Orbitsville Departure [29] in 1983, even if, it seems, without clear distinction of brain and spinal cord. "At the end of 23^rd century" criminals cause "total brain scour" to a young wife and her son "not long past his first birthday". Medical aid comes fast, and the husband keeps wife & boy in the family. The boy fast recuperates, and nobody can tell if he is the same as before. However things are more complicated for the wife. She rapidly re-learns walking, continence & such, but she is developing a new individuality in a second childhood.

            However, how new? The husband amply observes signals that "Cona Dallen doesn't live here any more", but he dos not want to accept this. And sometimes he gets controversial signals; or seems to getting. Is he right? Of course, I have no opinion.

            And then three more exotic problems for the end.

1) On Soul/Spirit. First observe that Church language depends on the actual Church when naming the Third (?; explanation in App. C) Person of Holy Trinity. In some Churches it is then Holy Spirit, in others  the Holy Ghost. Of course the official language of the Roman Catholic Church is/has been Latin, so there is Spiritus Sanctus, so Holy Spirit; but some Protestants prefer Holy Ghost. However the Churches prefer "soul" for the ethereal essence in humans. (E.g. SOS = Save Our Souls.) Still, even in some contexts this esssence is "spirit". But for simplicity I will use "soul".

            According to all Christian religions (except maybe for Mormons) this soul comes from God, and at Death returns to Him; and generally is not used again. However opinia differ when is the soul given. Haeckel in [30] tells us that the Canon Law of the Catholic Church stated that this happens "only weeks after" [the conception]. Haeckel of course was an eminent biologist expert in Amphioxus (at his 70^th birthday his colleagues appropriately served sandwiches with Amphioxus instead of sardella rings), but he was ardent freethinker plus Lutheran, so not necessarily objective ands well-informed about Canon Law. Presently the Church states "at conception". However I asked a woman colleague who told that she generally "feels" the embryo at "several weeks", sometimes it goes then away, sometimes not, and then she can sometimes :"send away". While I was not surprised at all about the last statement )mice can do it), I then asked a woman biologist about this sending away and she confirmed. Therefore we can believe Haeckel; and then it is obvious that even if somebody believes in a soul obtained from outside, the exact time is far from trivial. As for localisation, the stark monistic Haeckel tells that "the dualists" believe that the center of the soul (anima or psyche) is the phroneme. Since my experience is that "dualists" generally do not give me clear answer to the question "where", we can continue for the lack of more authoritative answer. However I am  simple physicist, so let us return to Haeckel to see where is the phroneme, which, according to him, is the center of the soul according to "the dualists". Now, he tells that the phoneme is in the cortex where the phronetes are localised. These are some specialised neurons. He refers (but without bibliography) a Flechsig from 1894, and I propose we be content with this.

            Now the present Catholic standpoint is clear. If the soul is located at all, it cannot be located "in the phroneme" ar in the cortex from conception, because there is no brain just after conception. Indeed, the spinal cord appears earlier than the brain. So from Catholic viewpoint it must not be trivial that a person with dead brain but intact spinal cord is Dead. QED.

            Of course I do not claim that such a well-founded theological opinion could not be true. I ask, not answer; and I am definitely not a theologian.

2) Partial Human Decerebration in Serious Strokes.

            Sometimes stroke patients "lose their contact with the external world", but still they live. In some cases later they recuperate (fully or rather partially) and they tell that they did not lose the contact. Sometimes this may be true, sometimes they only imagine this. Sometimes trhe loving relative tells thast she "sees in the eyes of the patient" that he/she "{is with us". Now, of course, a sceptic refusesa the statement as badly founded and influenced by wistful thinking. It is influenced, indeed. But the continuum of decerebrated dogs may warn us.

            For simplicity's sake take the example of the decorticised dog. Its "hind" parts of the brain together with the spinal cord continue to govern "the body", but without ther most intellectual part of the canine brain, the phroneme of Haeckel. Indeed, the intellectual performance of the dog's body becomes infernal.

            OK; but what happens with the dog's cortex? It will not die; the blood supply & such are normal. Maybe after a while the cortex goes mad. But how many time is needed for this? Anbd would it be impossible to get answers from the cortex? Of course, to decide this dogs specially trained before decorticising would be needed, and even then the experiment would be hard.

            Now this idea is not idle sadism. If there is any way to get insight into the minds of heavily stroked patients can be got by experiments of animals, the experiments seem "ethical". (The expression is rather not too well defined for a physicist.) The daughter of one partially recuperated patient (also a physicist, I mean the daughter) told me that his father reported no lost of passive contact but being very angry not to be able to communicate with the persons tending him.

3) The Death of Nations

            Nations exist; and sometimes do die. A Hungarian poet, M. Vörösmarty, after the unsuccessful war in 1848/9 visioned the Death of the Hungarian Nation, writing (in my clumsy translation) that "The grave, where a Nation is sinking; Peoples surround; And in the millions of Humanity; There are the tears of mourning.

            Now, Vörösmarty was not right. Not because Hungary did not sink into a grave in 1849, but because when Hungary in 1920 was cut to one-third, the surrounding millions of Humanity, and even most of Humanity interested sat all did not mourn; in their eyes we saw the happy tears of gloating. Well, I am a Hungarian, but being a physicist, I could continue undisturbed; this single sarcastic sentence does not mar my general objectivity.

            Nations do die. History gives us a long list of Nations existent in Past (sometimes even great) and pure memory now. In some rather infrequent clear cases the members of that Nation all died; so the Nation died with them. How4ver this case is rarer than generally believed.

            In Central Europe from 1800 it is usual to equate languages with nations; and we know well-defined cases when a language died. To restrict myself to a well-documented European and fairly recent case, the Dalmatian language died when her last speaker, Antonio Udine Burbur, died in an Adriatic island. In High Middle Ages Dalmatian, a Neo-Latin, not Slavic language (so clearly not Croatian & such), was spoken in such cities of Mainland Dalmatia as Zara (Zadar now), Spalato (Split) or Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The first common king of Croatia & Hungary, Coloman I, was separately crowned as King of Dalmatia too, and the trasditional Dalmatian royal city was Nonas (Nin). But sometimes in the 1400's the Dalmatian city people changed to Venetian language (close anyways). In villages and especially on the islands Dalmatian lived on until the death of Antonio Udine Burbur, and in his last years he was continuously pestered by linguists, so good vocabularies & grammars remained. 18 years after Burbur's death the last (until now) Hapsburg Emperor, Charles I, was crowned in Vienna, and when his titles were enumerated, the King of DFalmatia was included. On his coronation in Budapest he became Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Croatia and King of Dalmatia. So then still there was a Dalmatian Nation, even if there was no more a Dalmatian language (and, moreover, whole Dalmatia was usurped by Austria, which the Croatiansa continuously protested with the support of Hungary).

            The Scottish Nation does exist even if now 99% of the population speaks a language more or less similar to English, and only 1% retaining the Celtic Scottish-Gail. And, on the other hand, there is Switzerland, without a Swiss language. If the members of a Nation want to preserve the Nation, they can. There are well-documented European examples when a locality of a Nation was completely overrun and kept so for decades, and still the Nation survived. The best-known example is Poland completely occupied bw. 1846 & 1918, whose national anthem even now states "Eśće Polska ne zgniela..." or cca. "Poland is not yet lost...".

            And still, there are extinct nations. I of course do not know how many in Provence regard themselves as members of the Provençal Nation; but I am fairly sure that the Burgund Nation, having full-right Kings around 1000 and such heroes as Sigfried, Günther & al. known from Wagner operas (and of course do not forget Kriemhild/Ildikó, last wife of Tanhu Attila) half a millennium earlier. And there are Mayas, even speakers of the Mayan language in hundreds of thousands. But is there a Maya Nation?

            OK, Mayans were decentralised. But the Inca State was not. And masses speak Kechua in the Andes, but there is no Inca Nation. This last attempt to revive was the revolt of Tupac Amaru c. 1750, and that was unsuccessful. In the 1970's white leftists started a Tupamaro movement on anti-Imperialist & anti-USA grounds, but in Uruguay, without any Inca tradition.

            I think, the difficulty to get a clear answer so far is that a Nation ius at least a quaternary structure and in decay the member humans can be incorporated by concurrent quaternaries, as Maris observed exceptional cases when after the death of the termite Queen (and so that of the quaternary Termite Hill) some work\ers & warriors were incorporated by really neighbour Hills.

            But this is a good catchword for the end: Exactly how dies a Nation?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

            I was medicated in the hospital "Nyirő Gyula", District 13, Budapest, Hungary, in the frame of the standard health insurance system and I was quite contented, as far as it is possible. I definitely had no reason for complaints. The food was even good.

APPENDIX A: ON THE LAYERED STRUCTURES OF SOME OLD EASTERN SOCIETIES

In early Egypt (mainly during Dynasties 3 & 4) the Pharaoh was a Great God, and in principle even his right-hand men were servants as anybody else (although from practical sense the difference between the Grand Vizier and a farmer in the Delta was tremendous). So Politology simply stated that Pharaoh expresses His Will, and the people fulfils it. From Dynasty 5 the ideology became "more democratic", the Pharaoh being simply the Son of Sun-god Re, and gradually the painting became familiar with the idea that scenes can be shown with Pharaoh, headmen and common men, of course with diminishing sizes. But still everybody depended from Pharaoh.

            In Mesopotamia the really big State appears with the reign of Hammurabi. But no biological similes are used; rather Laws. Hammurabi's Laws are extant and well known. For definiteness’ sake I cite [31], but I do not like much this translation. The very important terms awelum/mushkenum he translates (free) man/freed man, and today this translation is in minority. However let us continue. The Laws show a somewhat layered society.

            There are the Palace and the Gods (State & Churches). Their properties are defended by the strictest punishments; but there are not much about them in the Laws. (Obviously they could defend themselves quite effectively.) Then there are the full-right members of the community. Such a man is an awelum; he is the paterfamilias, and for nonadult or nonmale persons the Laws use the formulae "awelum's son", "awelum's daughter" &c. If an awelum breaks the bone of an awelum, his bone be broken. (Law 197 in the numbering of [31].) Then there are fellows "not quite" members of the community, as shepherds & such; maybe  they are outside of the cities and not so important. And, of course, there are slaves.

            This would be not a layered society, at least in legal sense; were not here the mushkenum-men. Namely, some paragraphs distinguish between awelum and mushkenum on the recipient end. It seems that the mushkenum is "less worthy". Laws 196-223 rigorously distinguish if the damage is caused on/to awelum, mushkenum, awelum's slave, mushkenum's slave &c. The punishment is less if the att5acked is mushkenum; or it is physical for an awelum's bone while 1 mana silver for mushkenum's bone. What is really interesting is Laws 202-204 about slapping face (or in [31] body):

            If it is done by an awelum to an awelum of higher rank, the punishment is 60 hits with a whip of bullhide. If it is done by an awelum to an awelum of equal rank, the punishment is 1 manum (=60 shiqlum) silver. If a mushkenum slapped the face of a mushkenum, the punishment is 10 shiklum silver.

            We might be interested what happened if an awelum slapped the face of a mushkenum, or vice versa. The Laws are silent, which may mean that i) such never happened; or ii) that the Law was not interested. But awelum and mushkenum both were free, both were defended by the law, but not in the same extent and/or ways. Historians still do not agree what was a mushkenum exactly: maybe the term is related to the mushkab-men mentioned by Kilamuwa, King of Sam'al c. 825 BC (they growling as dogs). If so, the mushkenum would be the older population subjugated by the Amurrus of Hammurabi's ancestors, but this is rather uncertain. But still, the awelum-mushkenum dichotomy is not specialisation.

APPENDIX B: WELLS ON "CLASSES" 3000 YEARS AGO

            In [25] H. G. Wells distinguishes 12 separate groups for Archaic times, roughly for Old Mesopotamia, Old Egypt and maybe until Old Rome (so until Menenius Agrippa). Wells' groups, in my terminology and with my brief comments in this font are as follows:

1) Priests

2) Royal court & courtiers (including the high leaders of warriors but not the masses of troops)

3) Peasants (meaning tillers of land)

4) Artificers (city people; Wells of course does not yet know about the Andronovo culture where bronze tools were made in separate villages; this was possible because the Altai with tin mines was near and the horse was used by everybody)

5) Shepherds (originally often with origin quite separate from peasants)

6) Merchants (the big ones, including maybe shipowners)

7) Vendors

8) Independent rich men (such city people may be of late product of social evolution)

9) House slaves (of multiple origin; until Classical Greece and Clasasical Rome this group is hardly distinguishable from the extended family, and definitely is within the society)

10) Workers (working in masses, originally POW, convicts, exiles &c.)

11) Mercenaries (often foreigners, POW or defeated enemies)

12) Sailors (vs. shipowners?)

The appearance of some such groups may have been the result of geographic growth of a society. Often animal husbandry vs. plant tending were specialised professions of 2 peoples quite separate for origins (but sometimes we do not see this). Artificers may have come from a subjugated city people if the conquerors were more or less nomadic, but of course Indus Aryan charioteers as needed their own artificers as Sarmatian & Ugric (and later Turkic & Mongolian) horse nomads needed and had them. Long range caravaneer merchants originally might or might not come from the same society as consumers (generally the court). In an originally land-locked society, however, shipowners & sailors must have come from later subjugated or friendly seaports/big riverine ports. Mass workers indeed often were POW or convicts, so people outside Society Proper, but the masses of Pyramide Builders on Old Kingdom of Egypt were full-right peasants working on the pyramid transiently during flood seasons. Mercenaries were, of course, foreigners as a rule.

                In some cases these groups kept their separateness, partially separate laws &c. for a long time. If so, then they were or at least seemed to be on the way of forming separate "organs" in Marais' sense. However in Europe the tendency seemed to reduce the number of the c. 12 original groups.

APPENDIX C: SOME NOTES ON THE HOLY TRINITY

            According to general opinion, the Holy Spirit is the third member of Trinity. But in some sense it is the second.

            No doubt, Father is the first; He appears in the first books of the Bible. Of course even in the firstmost verse there is a mention of a spirit above the abyss; that may or may not the Holy Spirit. But my reference is more definite: to the Book of Wisdom, written c. 50 BC, so before (the terrestrial appearance of) Jesus, the Son.

            Well, Protestants excised the Book of Wisdom; that is their problem. According to Catholic theology, God's Wisdom in the Book of Wisdom is cca. the pre-image of Holy Spirit.

            Wisdom is Sophia in Greek, the language of the Alexandrine community writing Book of Wisdom. Sophia is of course feminine for gender. Psyche. the Greek for spirit, is feminine too. I was told that Ruach, Soul/Spirit in Hebrew, is feminine too. I did not check this last statement. But if so, the small Ivrit (Neo-Hebrew)-speaking Catholic diocese on the Holy Land has no confusion when reading the Book of Wisdom.

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