218 Evolution of Society. 



onic period multiply and simultaneously differentiate their 

 parts. In the newer parts of our own country we yearly 

 see societies begin in homogeneous conditions, and rapidly 

 become transformed into fully organized structures with all 

 the organs and functions of the most advanced societies. 

 Not being compelled to take all the steps of growth for 

 themselves, and being privileged to borrow from others, 

 they sometimes grow with a speed that suggests mere ag- 

 gregation ; still the relations of their associated parts, 

 on examination, are found to be those of the vital order. 

 Then, in living bodies and in society, alike, with increase 

 of bulk, conies progressive differentiation of connected, mu- 

 tually dependent functions, resulting in a physiological 

 division of labor in both cases, through developed organs 

 adapted and specialized so as to accomplish a higher grade 

 of work, thereby increasing the powers and raising the 

 grade of the whole. 



Much of the difficulty of conceiving of society as an or- 

 ganism arises from the fact that it is evident to the senses 

 that society is composed of individual units having a life 

 of their own, but with no apparent connecting tissue by 

 which they are related to the other units composing society. 

 We are therefore compelled to look deeper into the organ- 

 ization of living bodies ; and \vhen we do so, by the aid of 

 modern Biology and modern instruments, we find that they 

 also are built up out of cell-units ; that the differentiation 

 of organs and functions in them is dependent on and ac- 

 companied by the vital' plasticity of these cell-units, or, in 

 other words, on a change of function similar in many re- 

 spects to that which takes place in and among the individ- 

 ual units of society ; and that each cell of the animal body 

 has still more or less of independent, individual life on 

 which depend many of those characteristics that distinguish 

 organic from inorganic bodies, — as capacity to unite again 

 after being cut or separated by violence, to generate new 

 cells, to repair injured tissue ; and even to transfer tissue 

 from one part of an animal to another part of the same 

 animal ; and also to transfer it from one animal to another 

 animal — amounting to an emigration of cells from one 

 country and allegiance, and naturalization in another and 

 distinct country. We find, in fact, that living bodies are 

 in reality communities of living cells, still in possession of 

 many of the powers of independent cells, but contributing 



