SOCIETY AN ORGANISM. 



i 



the life of the aggregate greatly exceeds in duration the lives of its 

 units. The minute living elements composing a developed animal 

 severally evolve, play their parts, decay, and are replaced, while the 

 animal as a whole continues. In the deep layer of the skin, cells are 

 formed by fission, which, as they enlarge, are thrust outward, and, he- 

 coming flattened to form the epidermis, eventually .exfoliate, while the 

 younger ones beneath take their places. Liver-cells, growing by im- 

 bibition of matters from which they separate the bile, presently die, 

 and their vacant seats are occupied by another generation. Even 

 bone, though so dense and seemingly inert, is permeated by blood- 

 vessels carrying materials to replace old components by new ones. 

 And the replacement, rapid in some tissues and in others slow, goes 

 on at such rate that, during the continued existence of the entire 

 body, each portion of it has been many times over produced and de- 

 stroyed. Thus it is also with a society and its units. Integrity of 

 the whole and of each large division is perennially maintained, not- 

 withstanding the deaths of component citizens. The fabric of living 

 persons, which, in a manufacturing town, produces some commodity for 

 national use, remains after a century as large a fabric, though all the 

 masters and workers who a century ago composed it have long since 

 disappeared. Even with the minor parts of this industrial structure 

 the like holds. A firm that dates from past generations, still carry- 

 ing on business in the name of its founder, has had all its members and 

 employes changed one by one, perhaps several times over, while the 

 firm has continued to occupy the same place and to maintain like rela- 

 tions to buyers and sellers. Throughout we find this. Governing 

 bodies, general and local, ecclesiastical corporations, armies, institu- 

 tions of all orders down to guilds, clubs, -philanthropic associations, 

 etc., show us a continuity of life exceeding that of the persons consti- 

 tuting them. Nay, more. As part of the same law, we see that the 

 existence of the society at large exceeds in duration that of some of 

 these compound parts. Private unions, local public bodies, secondary 

 national institutions, towns carrying on special industries, may decay, 

 while the nation, maintaining its integrity, evolves in mass and structure. 



In both cases, too, the mutually-dependent functions of the various 

 divisions, being severally made up of the actions of many units, it 

 results that these units, dying one by one, are replaced without the 

 function in which they share being sensibly affected. In a muscle 

 each sarcous element wearing out in its turn is removed, and a sub- 

 stitution made while the rest carry on their combined contractions as 

 usual ; and the retirement of a public official or death of a shopman 

 perturbs inappreciably the business of the department or activity of 

 the industry in which he had a share. 



Hence arises in the social organism, as in the individual organism, 

 a life of the whole quite unlike the lives of the units, though it is a 

 life produced by them. 



