610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with this presumption against it, that it is at variance with such 

 knowledge as we possess of the past history of mankind ; and the 

 doubt as to its soundness, which this circumstance cannot but sug- 

 gest, will, I think, find confirmation, when we look closely into that 

 analogy between the social and the animal organisms on which the 

 ichole speculation is built up. In the striking and ingenious essay in 

 which Mr. Spencer first traced this analogy he frankly admits that it 

 does not run on all-fours, and he enumerates no less than four points 

 in which the analogy fails. There will be no need at present to refer 

 to more than one of these : it is to the effect that, unlike the sentient 

 life of animals, which is concentrated in the brain, the sentient life 

 of societies is diffused equally over the entire surface 



" A fact," says Mr. Spencer, " which reminds us that, while in individual 

 bodies the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the nervous system, 

 whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or evil of life, in bodies 

 politic the same thing does not hold, or holds but to a very slight extent. It is 

 well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the 

 whole; because the whole lias a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or 

 misery. But it is not so with a society ; since its living units do not and cannot 

 lose individual consciousness, and since the community as a whole has no cor- 

 porate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of 

 citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the state, but 

 why, on the other hand, the state is to be maintained solely for the benefit of 

 citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts, 

 instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life." 



I have called attention to this admission because it appears to me 

 to involve very much larger consequences than Mr. Spencer seems 

 disposed to allow consequences, if I mistake not, fatal to this theory. 

 For what does it amount to ? To this, that, however closely the two 

 organisms he has been comparing may correspond in certain details 

 of structure and function, the main purposes of the two schemes 

 the ends for which alone all the contrivances exist, and with refer- 

 ence to which their goodness or badness must be judged are essen- 

 tially different ; the aim of the one being to sustain the corporate 

 existence, and to contribute to the corporate happiness ; while that 

 of the other can pi-operly have regard only to the existence and hap- 

 piness of the individual elements which compose it. This being so, 

 what can be more preposterous than to erect the modes of organiza- 

 tion furnished by the animal kingdom into patterns and exemplars by 

 which to regulate the relations of social life ? What does such doc- 

 trine come to but a proposal deliberately to sacrifice the substance to 

 the shadow the ends of social existence to the establishment of a 

 fanciful analogy ? The reader of Prof. Huxley's essay on " Administra- 

 tive Nihilism " will probably remember the passage in which he turns 

 the analogy in question against Mr. Spencer, and converts it into an 

 argument in favor of extending the functions of the state, or rather 

 shows how it might be thus converted : 





