98 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



social therefore we call society an organism. It is 

 doubtful whether we can credit this thesis to the 

 contributions which Mr. Stephen has received from 

 evolutionism. It goes back not to search more deeply 

 as far as Comte, who had no patience with idle 

 inquiries into the origin of species. But in Mr. 

 Stephen's mind it is lighted up and vivified by modern 

 evolutionary science especially by the doctrine of a 

 "moving equilibrium " between organism and environ- 

 ment. 



In the next place, Mr. Stephen may be said to 

 combine these two positions in a syllogism, which issues 

 in a third proposition by way of conclusion. Since all 

 organisms strive after maximum efficiency, and since 

 society is an organism, 1 society also will strive for maxi- 

 mum efficiency. But here to a certain extent hypo- 

 thesis begins we may very well understand moral 

 rules as the outcome of this striving, or as the formu- 

 lated conditions of maximum social efficiency. The 

 effort or nisus of the social organism has broken into 

 consciousness in the individual members of society in 

 the shape of moral commands or ideals of duty. A 

 Darwinian doctrine of competing organisms is scarcely 

 if at all found in Mr. Stephen. So far as he thinks of 

 any competition, the competition is rather between the 

 claims of the individual man and the claims of society. 

 Each man is an organism, immersed in the thickest of 

 the struggle for existence, striving to do the best for 

 himself. But then, society too is an organism ; and it 

 also strives ; and its precepts cut across the blind self- 

 interest of the natural man checking it, modifying it, 

 perhaps overruling it. 



1 We shall see, however, presently that Mr. Stephen prefers a slightly 

 different phraseology. 



