CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 107 



are subject, such parts will tend toward likeness ; and this is what 

 happens with their nervous and vascular systems. Duly to coordi- 

 nate the actions of all parts of an active organism, there requu*es a 

 controlling apparatus ; and the conditions to be fulfilled for perfect 

 coordination are conditions common to all active organisms. Hence, 

 in proj)ortion as fulfillment approaches completeness in the highest or- 

 ganisms, however otherwise unlike their types are, this apparatus ac- 

 quires in all of them certain common characters especially extreme 

 centralization. Similarly with the apparatus for distributing nutri- 

 ment. The relatively high activity accompanying superior organiza- 

 tion implies great waste ; great waste implies active circulation of 

 blood ; active circulation of blood implies eificient propulsion ; so that 

 a heart becomes a common need for highly evolved creatures, however 

 otherwise unlike their structures may be. Thus is it, too, with socie- 

 ties. As they evolve, there arise certain conditions to be fulfilled for 

 the maintenance of social life ; and, in proportion as the social life be- 

 comes high, these conditions need to be more effectually fulfilled. A 

 legal code expresses one set of these conditions. It formulates certain 

 regulative principles to which the conduct of citizens must conform 

 that social activities may be harmoniously carried on. And, these reg- 

 ulative principles being in essentials the same everywhere, it results 

 that systems of law acquire certain general similarities as the most de- 

 veloped social life is approached. 



These special replies to Mr. Leslie's objections are, however, but 

 introductory to the general reply ; which would be, I think, adequate 

 even in their absence. Mr. Leslie's method is that of taking detached 

 groups of social phenomena, as those of language, of fashion, of trade, 

 and arguing (though, as I have sought to show, not effectually) that 

 their later transformations do not harmonize with the alleged general 

 law of evolution. But the real question is, not whether we find ad- 

 vance to a more definite coherent heterogeneity in these taken sepa- 

 rately, but whether we find this advance in the structures and actions 

 of the entire society. Even were it true that the law does not hold in 

 certain orders of social processes and products, it would not follow 

 that it does not hold of social processes and products in their totality. 

 The law is a law of the transformation of aggregates ; and must be 

 tested by the entire assemblages of phenomena which the aggregates 

 present. Omitting societies in states of decay and dissolution, which 

 exhibit the converse change, and contemplating only societies which are 

 growing, Mr. Leslie will, I think, scarcely allege of any one of them that 

 its structures and functions do not, taken altogether, exhibit increasing 

 heterogeneity. And, if, instead of taking each society as an aggregate, 

 he takes the entire aggregate of societies which the earth supports, 

 from primitive hordes up to highly civilized nations, he will scarcely 

 deny that this entire aggregate has been becoming more various in the 

 forms of societies it includes, and is still becoming more various. 



