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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them is implied by the maintenance, for generations and centuries, 

 of a general likeness of arrangement throughout the area occupied. 

 And it is this trait which yields our idea of a society. For, with- 

 holding the name from an ever-changing cluster such as primitive 

 men form, we apply it only where some constancy in the distribution 

 of parts has resulted from settled life. 



But now, regarding a society as a thing, what kind of a thing must 

 we call it ? It seems totally unlike every object with which our 

 senses acquaint us. Any likeness it may possibly have to other ob- 

 jects cannot be manifest to perception, but can be discerned only by 

 reason. If the constant relations among its parts make it an entity, 

 the question arises whether these constant relations among its parts 

 are akin to the constant relations among the parts of other entities. 

 Between a society and anything else, the only conceivable resem- 

 blance must be one due to parallelism of principle in the arrange- 

 ment of components. 



There are two great classes of aggregates with which the social 

 aggregate may be compared the inorganic and the organic. Are 

 the attributes of a society, considered apart from its living units, in 

 any way like those of a not-living body ? or are they in any way like 

 those of a living body ? or are they entirely unlike those of both ? 



The first of these questions needs only to be asked to be answered 

 in the negative. A whole of which the parts are alive cannot, in its 

 general characters, be like lifeless wholes. The second question, not 

 to be thus promptly answered, is to be answered in the affirmative. 

 The reasons for asserting that the permanent relations among the 

 parts of a society are analogous to the permanent relations among 

 the parts of a living body, we have now to consider. 



When we say that growth is common to social aggregates and 

 organic aggregates, we do not thus entirely exclude community with 

 inorganic aggregates : some of these, as crystals, grow in a visible 

 manner; and all of them, on the hypothesis of evolution, are con- 

 cluded to have arisen by integration at some time or other. Never- 

 theless, compared with things we call inanimate, living bodies and 

 societies so conspicuously exhibit augmentation of mass that we may 

 fairly regard this as characteristic of them both. Many organisms 

 grow throughout their lives, and the rest grow throughout considera- 

 ble parts of their lives. Social growth usually continues either up to 

 times when the societies divide, or up to times when they are over- 

 whelmed. 



Here, then, is the first trait by which societies ally themselves with 

 the organic world, and substantially distinguish themselves from the 

 inorganic world. 



It is also a character of social bodies, as of living bodies, that 

 while they increase in size they increase in structure. A low animal, 

 or the embryo of a high one, has few distinguishable parts ; but along 



