HAMMERS AND PERCUSSION. u 



of the society. It has ever to be remembered that great as may be 

 the efforts made for the prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims 

 of the body politic are nothing in themselves, and become something 

 only in so far as they embody the claims of its component individuals. 



From this last consideration, which is a digression rather than a 

 part of the argument, let us now return and sum up the various reasons 

 for regarding a society as an organism. 



It undergoes continuous growth ; as it grows, its parts, becoming 

 unlike, exhibit increase of structure ; the unlike parts simultaneously 

 assume activities of unlike kinds ; these activities are not simply dif- 

 ferent, but their differences are so related as to make one another po^s- 

 'sible ; the reciprocal aid thus given causes mutual dependence of the 

 parts ; and the mutually-dependent parts, living by and for one an- 

 other, form an aggregate constituted on the same general principle as 

 an individual organism. The analogy of a society to an organism 

 becomes still clearer on learning that every organism of appreciable 

 size is a society, and on further learning that, in both, the lives of the 

 units continue for some time if the life of the aggregate is suddenly 

 arrested, while if the aggregate is not destroyed by violence its life 

 greatly exceeds in duration the lives of its units. Though the two are 

 contrasted as respectively discrete and concrete, and though there 

 results a difference in the ends subserved by the organization, there 

 does not result a difference in the laws of the organization : the re- 

 quired mutual influences of the parts, not transmissible in a direct way, 

 being transmitted in an indirect way. 



Having thus considered in their most general forms the reasons for 

 regarding a society as an organism, we are prepared for following out 

 the comparison in detail. We shall find that the further we pursue it 

 the closer does the analogy appear. 







HAMMERS AND PERCUSSION". 



By the Rev. ARTHUR RIGG, M. A. 



THE only mechanical tools for external use with which man is pro- 

 vided by Nature are : the hammer, a compound vise, and a 

 scratching or scraping tool ; these are all in the hand. As a vise, the 

 hand is worthy of a very lengthened notice ; as a hammer alone it is 

 now our concern. While upon a substance softer than itself the fist 

 can deal an appreciable blow, with one harder than itself the reaction 

 of the substance transfers the blow to the flesh and bone of Nature's 

 hammer. Hence early arose the necessity of an artificial hammer of 

 stone or other hard substance. 



1 Abstract of three lectures before the London Society of Arts. 



