THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. sgg 



of low type, has no appliances for combining the actions of its remoter 

 parts. When cooperation of them against an enemy is called for, 

 there is nothing but the spread of an alarm from man to man through- 

 out the scattered population; just as, in an undeveloped kind of ani- 

 mal, there is merely a slow, undirected diffusion of stimulus from one 

 point to all others. In either case, the evolution of a larger, more 

 complex, more active organism, implies an increasingly-efficient set of 

 agencies for conveying from part to part the material products of the 

 respective parts, and an increasingly-efficient set of agencies for mak- 

 ing the parts cooperate, so that the times and amounts of their activi- 

 ties may be kept in fit relations. And this is what we find. In the 

 individual organism, as it advances to a high structure, no matter of 

 what class, there arises an elaborate system of channels through which 

 the common stock of nutritive matters (here added to by absorption, 

 there changed by secretion, in this place purified by excretion, and in 

 another modified by exchange of gases) is distributed throughout the 

 body for the feeding of the various parts, severally occupied in their 

 special actions ; while in the social organism, as it advances to a high 

 structure, no matter of what political type, there develops an extensive 

 and complicated trading organization for the distribution of commodi- 

 ties, which, sending its heterogeneous currents through the kingdom 

 by channels that end in retailers' shops, brings within reach of each 

 citizen the necessaries and luxuries that have been produced by others, 

 while he has been producing his commodity or small part of a com- 

 modity, or performing some other function or small part of a function, 

 beneficial to the rest. Similarly, development of the individual organ- 

 ism, be its class what it may, is always accompanied by development 

 of a nervous system which renders the combined actions of the parts 

 prompt and duly proportioned, so making possible the adjustments 

 required for meeting the varying contingencies ; while along with 

 development of the social organism there always goes development of 

 directive centres, general and local, with established arrangements for 

 interchanging information and instigation, serving to adjust the rates 

 and kinds of activities going on in different parts. 



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. 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 multitudinous 

 illustrations, and fit for extension in new directions. The luminous 

 conception first enunciated by one whom we may claim as our coun- 

 tryman by blood, though French by birth, M. Milne-Edwards the 

 conception of "the physiological division of labor" obviously origi- 



