Scope and Purport of Evolution 47 



series of suggestive formulas, the next thing to be 

 done was to inquire into the applicability of the 

 law of evolution to the higher manifestations of 

 vital activity, in other words, to psychical and 

 social life. Here it was easy to point out analogies 

 between the development of society and the devel 

 opment of an organism. Between a savage state 

 of society and a civilized state, it is easy to see 

 the contrasts in complexity of life, in division of 

 labour, in interdependence and coherence of opera 

 tions and of interests. The difference resembles 

 that between a vertebrate animal and a worm. 



Such analogies are instructive, because at the 

 bottom of the phenomena there is a certain amount 

 of real identity. But Mr. Spencer did not stop with 

 analogies ; he pursued his problem into much 

 deeper regions. There is one manifest distinction 

 between a society and an organism. In the organ 

 ism, the conscious life, the psychical life, is not in 

 the parts, but in the whole ; but in a society, there 

 is no such thing as corporate consciousness : the psy 

 chical life is all in the individual men and women. 

 The highest development of this psychical life is 

 the end for which the world exists. The object of 

 social life is the highest spiritual welfare of the 

 individual members of society. The individual 

 human soul thus comes to be as much the centre 



