THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1876. 

 SOCIETY AN OKGANISM. 1 



By HEEBEET SPENCEE. 



THE question, What is a society ? has to be asked and answered 

 at the outset. Until we have decided whether or not to regard 

 a society as an entity, and until we have decided whether, if regarded 

 as an entity, a society is to be classed as absolutely unlike all other 

 entities or as like some others, our conception of the subject-matter 

 before us remains vague. 



It may be said that a society is but a collective name for a num- 

 ber of individuals. Carrying the controversy between nominalism 

 and realism into another sphere, a nominalist might affirm that, just 

 as there exist only the members of a species, while the species con- 

 sidered apart from them has no existence, so the units of a society 

 alone exist, while the existence of the society is but verbal. Instanc- 

 ing a lecturer's audience as an aggregate which, by disappearing at 

 the close of the lecture, proves itself to be not a thing but only a 

 certain arrangement of persons, he might argue that the like holds 

 of the citizens forming a nation. 



But, without disputing the other steps of his argument, the last 

 step may be denied. The arrangement, temporary in one case, is 

 lasting in the other ; and it is the permanence of the relations among 

 component parts which constitutes the individuality of a whole as 

 distinguished from the individualities of its parts. A coherent mass 

 broken into fragments ceases to be a thing ; while, conversely, the 

 stones, bricks, and wood, previously separate, become the thing called 

 a house if connected in fixed ways. 



Thus we consistently regard a society as an entity, because, though 

 formed of discrete units, a certain concreteness in the aggregate of 



1 From advance-sheets of the " Principles of Sociology," Part II., " The Inductions 

 of Sociology." 



VOL. IX. 1 



