THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE 837 



others. This is my own objection, and this view is contained in 

 my own theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, meaning the dual- 

 ism of that primitive economical condition, surviving in many 

 respects down to our own days, on the one hand, and "commer- 

 cial" or "capitalistic" society, of which the germs are traceable 

 in any form of what, with an abstract term, may be called com- 

 munism, on the other. It is the former sense that even modern 

 political economy may be spoken of (as we style it in German) 

 as "national" economy. But even if this be allowed, the organic 

 analogy does not hold other than in a rather indefinite way. Where 

 is the one "social body," which thus evolves its organs and mem- 

 bers, being in its early stage like a single household or a village 

 community, and growing to be a complex ensemble of manors and 

 municipalities and great cities, some of which have their manu- 

 factures working for foreign export, some for inland consump- 

 tion? Is it England that has taken a development of this kind? 

 Or are England and Wales? Or are Scotland, and even poor con- 

 quered Ireland, to be included? 



The more we should try to follow out the admirable attempt 

 which Herbert Spencer has made in this direction, of employing 

 the organicist view as a working hypothesis, the more we should 

 become convinced that our real insight into the lines along which 

 social evolution travels is more hampered than promoted by that 

 method of biological analogies. 



Ill 



But did I not say there was truth in the biological conception 

 of social life? Indeed I did, and I say so again, if social life is con- 

 sidered externally, and if we speak of a group as a living whole, 

 where life is understood in its genuine sense, that is to say, bio- 

 logically. And from this point of view, as that famous term, "physi- 

 ological division of labor," is borrowed from economical fact 

 and theory, we may vice versa apply physiological terms to social 

 life, considered externally. We may speak of organs and functions 

 in a nation or society, or even with respect to mankind at large. 

 We may metaphorically eall the civilized nations the "brain" of 

 humanity, and we may say that the United States has become 

 an independent lobe of the cortex in the course of the last forty 

 years. In the same way it was only lately, 1 understand, that your 

 President spoke of railways as the arteries through which the blood 

 of trade is circulating. The force of this metaphor will, I believe, 

 not be impaired by the fact that several theorists point in more 

 than a figurative sense to money, or credit, as the social fluid into 



