SPENCER'S "SOCIAL ORGANISM" 139 



usually but vague adumbrations of the truth." 



Lacking the great generalizations of bio- 

 logy, it was, as we have said, "impossible to 

 trace out the real relations of special organiza- 

 tions to organizations of another order." 

 Therefore he proposes "to show what are the 

 analogies which modern science discloses." 



Spencer then discovers four points in which 

 an individual organism and a society agree, 

 and four in which they differ. The points of 

 agreement are: 



(i.) "That commencing as small aggrega- 

 tions, they insensibly augment in mass; some 

 of them eventually reaching ten thousand 

 times what they originally were." 



(2.) "That while at first so simple in 

 structure as to be considered structureless, 

 they assume in the course of their growth 

 a continually increasing complexity of 

 structure." 



(3.) "That though in their early, un- 

 developed states, there exists in them scarcely 

 any mutual dependence of parts, their parts 

 gradually acquire a mutual dependence ; which 

 becomes at last so great, that the activity and 

 life of each part is made possible only by the 

 activity and life of the rest." 



(4.) "That the life of a society is inde- 

 pendent of, and far more prolonged than the 



