38 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



that the analogy between the animal organism and 

 the federal form of government is incomplete and 

 requires the recognition of the element of caste. 

 This element secures to the organism the services 

 of those materials best fitted by nature to fill the 

 various requirements of life. The organism adapts 

 itself from the beginning to the differing destinies 

 of the varied materials stored in the egg. In ful- 

 filling its fate, it is thus spared the losses of energy 

 that come from human competitions which are made 

 possible only by the failure to discern the inherent 

 difference in powers which determine the careers of 

 the individual citizens of a state. 



I question if one can with advantage carry much 

 farther the comparison of the living organism and 

 the state politic. But no less a writer than Herbert 

 Spencer tried to force the analogy. As the blood- 

 making layer of the embryo, the mesoblast, serves 

 for the carriage of nutriment from the inner or 

 mucous layer to the outer layer, or epiblast, Spencer 

 sees in this a parallel to what occurs in social prog- 

 ress. He says: "Between the governing and the 

 governed there at first exists no intermediate class ; 

 and even in some societies that have reached con- 

 siderable size there are scarcely any but the nobles 

 and their kindred on the one hand, and their serfs 

 on the other; the social structure being such that 

 transfer of commodities takes place directly from 

 slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher 

 type there grows up between these two primitive 



