SOCIETY AN ORGANISM. g 



the traits of the pastoral type depend on the natures of the creatures 

 reared ; and how, in settled societies, the plants producing food, mate- 

 rials for textile fabrics, etc., determine certain kinds of social arrange- 

 ments and actions. After which he might insist that, since the physi- 

 cal characters, mental natures, and daily activities, of the human units 

 are in part moulded by relations to these animals and vegetables 

 which, living by their aid, and aiding them to live, enter so much into 

 social life as even to be cared for by legislation, these lower living- 

 things cannot rightly be excluded from the conception of the social 

 organism. Hence woidd come his conclusion that when, with human 

 beings, are incorporated the less vitalized beings, animal and vege- 

 tal, covering the surface occupied by the society, an aggregate 

 results having a continuity of parts, more nearly approaching to that 

 of an individual organism, and which is also like it in being composed 

 of local aggregations of highly-vitalized units, imbedded in a vast 

 aggregation of units of various lower degrees of vitality, which are 

 in a sense produced by, modified by, and arranged by, the higher 

 units. 



But without accepting this view, and admitting that the discrete- 

 ness of the social organism stands in marked contrast with the con- 

 creteness of the individual organism, the objection may still be ade- 

 quately met. 



Though coherence among its parts is a prerequisite to that co- 

 operation by which the life of an individual organism is carried on, 

 and though the members of a social organism, not forming a con- 

 crete whole, cannot maintain cooperation by means of physical in- 

 fluences directly propagated from part to part, yet they can and do 

 maintain cooperation by another agency. Not in contact, they never- 

 theless affect one another through intervening spaces, both by emo- 

 tional language, and by the language, oral and written, of the intel- 

 lect. For carrying on mutually dependent actions it is requisite that 

 impulses, adjusted in their kinds, amounts, and times, shall be con- 

 veyed from part to part. This requisite is fulfilled in living bodies 

 by molecular waves, that are indefinitely diffused in low types, and 

 in high types are carried along definite channels (the function of which 

 lias been significantly called internuncial). It is fulfilled in societies 

 by the signs of feelings and thoughts, conveyed from person to person; 

 at first in vague ways and only at short distances, but afterward more 

 definitely and at greater distances. That is to say, the internuncial 

 function, not achievable by stimuli physically transferred, is neverthe- 

 less achieved by language. 



The mutual dependence of parts which constitutes organization is 

 thus effectually established. Though discrete instead of concrete, the 

 social aggregate is rendered a living whole. 



But now, on pursuing the course of thought opened by this objec- 

 tion and the answer to it, we arrive at an implied contrast of great 



