70 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



tween State and Organism. For, as Spencer argued, 

 was not the State in a true sense an organism — a 

 single biological unit composed of individual human 

 beings just as a metazoan animal was a single bio- 

 logical unit composed, in the first instance, of in- 

 dividual cells? Further, the investigation of the 

 evolutionary process seemed to reveal certain general 

 laws of its march: beings of the same original con- 

 stitution, exposed to the environmental forces of the 

 same planet, had reacted in similar ways, developing 

 along parallel lines, and arriving at similar types of 

 organization as end-result. Thus it might reason- 

 ably be supposed that we should find the same gen- 

 eral organization and mode of development in one 

 type of organism as in another, in human society 

 as in a vertebrate. 



On these bases, Spencer and his followers drew 

 elaborate comparisons of the two, and apparently 

 believed that they were reaching the same degree 

 of accuracy as that found in comparative anatomy 

 when they compared the circulatory system of a 

 mammal with the transport facilities of a State, or 

 drew parallels between the brain and the cabinet. 



It was speedily seen, however, that such general- 

 izations were so broad and vague as not to be of 

 much service: that the resemblances were in fact 

 often no more than symbolical or metaphorical, in- 

 stead of being based upon detailed similarity of 

 constitution or of evolutionary development. With 



