THE ORGANIC CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 1 25 



To appreciate Schaffle's use of the organic concept as applied to 

 society and especially the bearing of his teaching on our subject 

 one must understand his philosophical approach. A follower of 

 F. U. Lange and von Baer in his spiritual monism and so a posi- 

 tivist in his treatment of social phenomena from the point of view 

 of science, he nevertheless makes place for the hyper-scientific 

 world of values, — the realm of the aesthetic and religious.^ 

 Although making large use of the work of Fechner, Helmholtz and 

 Wundt in physiological psychology, he repudiates all attempts to 

 identify the two orders on the material side, and lays great stress 

 on the fact of teleology in the social process, asserting that this 

 fact gives warrant for belief in teleology in the world-order .^ 



With Nageli et ah, he posits as a necessary assumption to the 

 understanding of cosmic and especially of social evolution, an 

 entelechy or life-force with a tendency to reach out and develop to 

 ever higher forms of Hfe.^ 



A follower of Darwin in his belief in natural selection at least as 

 a powerful factor in organic evolution, he shows that in animal and 

 human societies the individual is not the unit of struggle but the 

 group, and that group life is characterized by mutual aid.^ He 

 holds that the law of natural selection operates very differently in 

 social evolution for the groups are ever enlarging, and the struggle 

 is not so much for existence as for kind of existence and is also 

 between social ideals and institutions.^ 



technisch. Der Mechanismus, der Chemismus imd das Spiel organischer Vorgange 

 werden im socialen Leben zu einer zweckbewnssten geistig bewegten Physik 

 erhoben. . . . 



" Der sociale Korper folgt aber auch einer vollig eigenartigen, wenn gleich 

 gesetzmassigen Entwickelung. . . . Diese Entwickelung ist die Wirkimg von in 

 historischem Sinn constanten Motiven und Bediirfnissen und von eben solchen 

 Naturvoraussetzungen. Sie ist nicht Ablauf eines mechanischen Uhrwerks. 

 Gegeniiber dem wunderbar sicheren und regelmassigen aber noch nicht genau 

 erklarbaren Verlauf der Evolutions- und * Involutions '-Erscheinungen orga- 

 nischer Leiber ist die sociale Entwickelung wesentlich Produkt der bewussten 

 Triebe oder Beweggriinde, die in jeder Generation des Volkes leben, jedoch unter 

 dem Einfluss fiihrender Geister und ihrer Ideen beharrlichen Neuerungen und 

 Bereicheningen unterliegen," op. ciL, i, p. 4. Cf. also, pp. 9, 10, 12, 828, 831. 



^ Bau und Leben, i, pp. 5, 63, 66. ' Ibid., ii, p. 20. 



2 Ibid., ii, p. 23; cf. i, p. 104. * Ibid., ii, pp. 11, 25. 



^ Ibid., ii, pp. 2, 29, 47. His theory of social development is summarized as follows 

 (ii, p. 55): "Die fortschreitende Gesellschaftsbildung (Civilisation) ist das hochste 



