SPENCER'S "SOCIAL ORGANISM" 141 



tend to break down when they are worked out 

 in detail. 



The advantage which Spencer had over 

 Plato and Hobbes is very clearly seen in the 

 first and fourth parallelisms, neither of which 

 could have been made until twenty-one years 

 before, when in 1839, Theodore Schwann de- 

 veloped his great theory that the body is an 

 organized society of interconnected cells. "The 

 importance of this theory," says Professor 

 Thatcher, "can hardly be estimated. It gave 

 an entirely new view to animal and vegetable 

 life." At any rate, it served Spencer greatly 

 in this essay. 



The next ten pages are devoted to organic 

 development from the protozoa, the lowest 

 tiny animal forms, to Crustacea — crabs etc., — 

 which are materially higher in the animal 

 scale. This development is marked by increas- 

 ing mutual dependence of parts and a growing 

 division of labor. It is compared to the de- 

 velopment of society from primitive Bushmen 

 to the early Anglo-Saxons, during which cor- 

 responding phenomena are traced. 



He escapes Haeckel's blunder at least to the 

 extent of calling the two divisions of labor by 

 their proper names. Among animals it is the 

 "physiological" division of labor; in society, 

 the "economical" division of labor. Whether 



