THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE 827 



respects remains the same in essence, notwithstanding a shift- 

 ing of matter; that is to say, an incessant elimination of waste 

 portions men who die and a constant accretion of fresh ele- 

 ments children born. Here the analogy with the essential char- 

 acteristics of an organism is obvious. Vegetable and animal organ- 

 isms likewise are only represented by such elements as are visible 

 at any time, and the law of life consists in this, that the remain- 

 ing portions always predominate over the eliminated and the re- 

 produced ones, and that the latter by and by move and fill up the 

 vacant spaces, while the relations of parts e. g., the coopera- 

 tion of cells as tissues, or of tissues as organs do not undergo 

 a substantial change. Thus such an application of biological no- 

 tions to the social life of mankind as the organicist theories 

 or methods set out to do is not to be rejected on principle. We 

 may, in fact, look upon any community of this kind maintain- 

 ing itself by receiving its parts as being a living whole or unity. 

 This view is the more plausible if the renewal itself is merely bio- 

 logical, as indeed is the case in the human family, and, as we think, 

 to a still greater extent because a family soon disperses itself 

 in certain larger groups: a tribe, a nation, or a race; although 

 there is involved in this view the question whether there is a same- 

 ness of nature or, as we usually say, of blood guaranteed, 

 as it should be, by an in-and-in breeding of parents (German, In- 

 zucht). Indeed, this self-conservation of a group is the less to be 

 expected, the smaller the group; and it is well known among 

 breeders that it is necessary for the life of a herd not to continue 

 too long selecting sires of the same breed, but from time to time 

 to refresh the blood by going beyond the limits of a narrow parent- 

 age, and crossing the race by mixtures with a different stock. 



At any rate, this is what I should call a purely biological aspect 

 of collective human life, in so far as that conception is restricted 

 to the mere existence of a human group, which, so to speak, is 

 self-active in its maintenance of life. 



This aspect, however, does not suffice when we consider social 

 units of a local character, which also continue their existence, 

 partly in the same, but partly in a different manner. With refer- 

 ence to them we do not think exclusively of a natural Stoffwechsel, 

 as it is effected by births and deaths of the individuals composing 

 the body, but we also consider the moving to and fro of living 

 men, women, and children, the ratio of which, like the ratio of 

 births and deaths, may cause an increase or a decrease of the whole 

 mass, and must cause one or the other if they do not balance. In 

 consequence of this, we also have less reason to expect a biological 

 identity of the stock of inhabitants at different times than a last- 

 ing connection between a part of space (the place), or rather a 



