THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 597 



And yet metaphors are here more than metaphors in the ordinary 

 sense. They are devices of speech hit upon to suggest a truth at first 

 dimly perceived, but which grows clearer the more carefully the evi- 

 dence is examined. That there is a real analogy between an individual 

 organism and a social organism becomes undeniable, when certain 

 necessities determining structure are seen to govern them in common. 



Mutual dependence of parts is that which initiates and guides or- 

 ganization of every kind. So long as, in a mass of living matter, all 

 parts are alike, and all pai'ts similarly live and grow without aid from 

 one another, there is no organization : the undifferentiated aggregate 

 of protoplasm thus characterized belongs to the lowest grade of liv- 

 ing things. Without distinct faculties, and capable of but the feeblest 

 movement, it cannot adjust itself to circumstances, and is at the 

 mercy of environing destructive actions. The changes by which this 

 structureless mass becomes a structured mass, having the characters 

 and powers possessed by what we call an organism, are changes 

 through which its parts lose their original likenesses, and do this while 

 assuming the unlike kinds of activity for which their respective posi- 

 tions toward one another and surrounding things fit them. These 

 differences of function, and consequent differences of structure, at first 

 feebly marked, slight in degree, and few in kind, become, as organi- 

 zation progresses, definite and numerous ; and in proportion as they 

 do this the requirements are better met. Now, structural traits, ex- 

 pressible in the same language, distinguish lower and higher types of 

 societies from one another ; and distinguish the earlier stages of each 

 society from the later. Primitive tribes show no established contrasts 

 of parts. At first all men carry on the same kinds of activities, with 

 no dependence on one another, or but occasional dependence. There 

 is not even a settled chieftainship ; and only in times of war is there a 

 spontaneous and temporary subordination to those who show them- 

 selves the best leaders. From the small unformed social aggregates 

 thus characterized, the progress is toward social aggregates of in- 

 creased size, the parts of which acquire unlikenesses that become ever 

 greater, mors definite, and more multitudinous. The units of the 

 society as it evolves fall into different orders of activities, determined 

 by differences in their local conditions or their individual powers ; 

 and there slowly result permanent social structures, of which the pri- 

 mary ones become decided while they are being complicated by sec- 

 ondary ones, growing in their turns decided, and so on. 



Even were this all, the analogy would be suggestive ; but it is not 

 all. These two metamorphoses have a cause in common. Beginning 

 with an animal composed of like parts, severally living by and for them- 

 selves, on what condition only can there be established a change, such 

 that one part comes to perform one kind of function, and another part 

 another kind ? Evidently each part can abandon that original state 

 in which it fulfilled for itself all vital needs, and can assume a state in 



