ANALOGIES WITH THE VITAL OKGANISM. 381 



Moreover, societies and organisms are not only alike in 

 these peculiarities, in which they are unlike all other 

 things ; but the highest societies, like the highest organ 

 isms, exhibit them in the greatest degree. We see that 

 the lowest animals do not increase to anything like the 

 sizes of the higher ones ; and, similarly, we see that aborigi- 

 nal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. 

 In complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed 

 primitive savage tribes, as a vertebrate animal does a 

 zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple creatures, 

 have so little mutual dependence of parts, that subdivision 

 or mutilation causes but little inconvenience ; but from 

 complex communities, as from complex creatures, you can- 

 not remove any considerable organ without producing 

 great disturbance or death of the rest. And in societies 

 of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of the aggregate, 

 often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in length 

 the lives of the component units, very far less than in civi- 

 lized communities and superior animals ; which outlive 

 many generations of their component units. 



On the other hand, the leading differences between 

 societies and individual organisms are these : — 



1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, 

 however, is a point of contrast which loses much of its im- 

 portance, when we remember that throughout the vegetal 

 kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions of the animal 

 kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite — definiteness 

 being rather the exception than the rule ; and that they 

 are manifestly in part determined by surrounding physical 

 circumstances, as the forms of societies are. If, too, it 

 should eventually be shown, a§ we believe it will, that the 

 form of every species of organism has resulted from the 

 average play of the external forces to which it has been 

 subject during its evolution as a species; then, that the 

 external forms of societies should depend, as they do, 



