376 THE SOCIAL OEGAiaSM. 



process of organization ; but the general coarse of this 

 process is beyond his control. N^ay, more than this is true. 

 Those who regard the histories of societies as the histories 

 of their great men, and think that these great men shape 

 the fates of their societies, overlook the truth that such 

 great men are the products of their societies. Without cer- 

 tain antecedents — without a certain average national char- 

 acter, they could neither have been generated nor could 

 have had the culture which formed them. If their society 

 is to some extent re-moulded by them, they were, both 

 before and after birth, moulded by their society — were the 

 results of all those influences which fostered the ancestral 

 character they inherited, and gave their own early bias, their 

 creed, morals, knowledge, aspirations. So that such social 

 changes as are immediately traceable to individuals of un- 

 usual power, are still remotely traceable to the social causes 

 which produced these individuals, and hence, from the 

 highest jDoint of view, such social changes also, are parts 

 of the general developmental process. 



Thus that which is so obviously true of the industrial 

 structure of society, is true of its whole structure. The fact 

 that " constitutions are not made, but grow," is simply a 

 fragment of the much larger fact, that under all its aspects 

 and though all its ramifications, society is a growth and not 

 a manufacture. 



A perception that there exists some analogy between 

 the body politic and a living individual body, was early 

 reached ; and from time to time re-appeared in literature. 

 But this perception was necessarily vague and more or 

 less fanciful. In the absence of physiological science, and 

 especially of those comprehensive generalizations which it 

 has but recently reached, it was impossible to discern the 

 real parallelisms. 



The central idea of Plato's model Republic, is the cor 



