Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/183

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BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY.
169
guished by a segregation of these social units into a few distinct classes. . . . And without further illustration the reader will at once perceive, that from these inferior types of society up to our own complicated and more perfect one, the progress has ever been of the same nature."

In pursuance of the analogy it is then shown that in either case in proportion to the multiplication of unlike parts, severally taking unlike functions, there is "an increasing mutual dependence" and a consequent individuation (integration) of the whole organism, animal or social:[1] the mutual dependence of parts being represented as that which constitutes the aggregate an organism.

Ten years later, in the essay on "The Social Organism," the conception here briefly outlined was elaborated. Four analogies between living bodies and bodies politic were enumerated.

"Commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in mass. . . . While at first so simple in structure as to be considered structureless, they assume, in the course of their growth, a continually-increasing complexity of structure. . . . Though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in them scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a mutual dependence. . . . The life of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged than, the lives of any of its component units." (Essays, Library ed., vol. i, p. 272.)

Neither in Social Statics, nor, I believe, in this essay is there any assertion that this analogy between animal structures and social structures is to be taken as the basis for sociological interpretations. In what way the analogy has been regarded by me was shown at a later date in The Study of Sociology. In that work it is said:—

"Now if there exists this fundamental kinship, there can be no rational apprehension of the truths of Sociology until there has been reached a rational apprehension of the truths of Biology." (P. 334.)

Taken by itself this sentence appears to justify the interpretation given of my view, but the sentences immediately succeeding show that this is not so.

"The services of the two sciences are, indeed, reciprocal. We have but to glance back at its progress, to see that Biology owes the cardinal idea on which we have been dwelling, to Sociology; and that having derived from Sociology this explanation of development, it gives it back to Sociology greatly increased in definiteness, enriched by countless illustrations, and fit for extension in new directions."

In pursuance of this assertion it is pointed out that Milne-Edwards derived "the conception of 'the physiological division of labor'" from the generalizations of political-economists. It is then said that "when carried from Sociology to Biology, this conception


  1. In passing I may remark that in the alleged progress from uniformity to multiformity, as well as in the implied processes of differentiation and integration, may be seen the earliest germ of the thought which eventually developed into the formula of evolution at large.