SUGGESTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 503 



THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 



The comparison of society to an organism is at 

 least as old as the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, 

 and the analogy has been a favourite one in many 

 minds. It has been made the keynote of what is 

 often called " biological sociology," it is especially 

 valuable in correcting mechanical ideas; but like 

 many another analogy, it has been overworked. 



As Spencer was one of the first to fill in the 

 analogy with biological detail, we may refer to his 

 comparison. In a famous essay in 1860 he com- 

 pared government to the central nervous system, 

 agriculture and industry to the alimentary tract, 

 transport and exchange to the vascular system of the 

 animal. He also pointed out that, like an organism, 

 a society grows and differentiates, and so on. 



While Spencer is largely responsible for the dif- 

 fusion of the analogy between a society and an 

 organism, it should be carefully noted that it was 

 he who introduced the term " super-organic " as de- 

 scriptive of society, indicating thereby that the bio- 

 logical conceptions may require considerable modi- 

 fication before they can be safely used in sociology. 



It is obvious that the analogy may be pursued far. 

 A society may be compared to an organism as re- 

 gards the genetic kinship of the component units 

 (the cell = the individual or the family?) ; in the 

 power of retaining integrity or equilibrium in spite 

 of ceaseless changes both internal and external; in 

 the internal struggle of parts which co-exists with 

 some measure of mutual subordination ; in owing its 

 peculiar virtue to the subtle inter-relations between 



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