3.SO THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 



considered structureless, they assume, in the course of 

 their growth, :i continually-increasing complexity of 

 structure. 



0. That though i:i their early, undeveloped states, 

 there exists in them scarcely any mutual dependence of 

 parts, their parts gradually acquire a mutual dependence; 

 which becomes at last so great, that the activity and life 

 of each part is made possible only by the activity and life 

 of the rest. 



1. That the life and development of a society is inde 

 pendent of, and iar more prolonged than, the life and de 

 velopment of any of its component units; who arc severally 

 born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body poli 

 tic composed of them survives generation alter generation, 

 increasing in ma^s, completeness of structure, and func 

 tional activity. 



These four parallelisms will appear the more significant 

 the more we contemplate them. While the points speci 

 fied, arc points in which societies agree with individual or 

 ganisms, they are points in which individual organisms 

 agree with each other, and disagree with all things else. 

 In the course of its existence, every plant and animal in 

 creases in mass, in a way not parallelled by inorganic ob 

 jects : even such inorganic objects as crystals, which arise 

 by growth, show us no such definite relation between 

 growth and existence as organisms do. The orderly pro 

 gress from simplicity to complexity, displayed by bodies 

 politic in common with all living bodies, is a characteristic, 

 which distinguishes living bodies from the inanimate bodies 

 amid which they move. That functional dependence of 

 parts, which is scarcely more manifot in animals or plants 

 than nations, has no counterpart elsewhere. And in it: 

 a jrgrc jrate except an organic, or a social one, is there :i 

 perpetual romoval and replacement of parts, joined with n 

 continued integrity of the whole. 



