266 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 



construct a symmetrical social philosophy. It has 

 long, indeed, been perceived that society is an organ- 

 ism, and an organism which has grown by natural 

 growth like a tree. But the tree to which it is 

 usually likened is such a tree as never grew on this 

 earth. For it is a tree without flowers ; a tree with 

 nothing but stem and leaves ; a tree that performed 

 the function of Nutrition, and forgot all about Repro- 

 duction. The great unrecognized truth of social 

 science is that the Social Organism has grown and 

 flowered and fruited in virtue of the continuous activ- 

 ities and inter-relations of the two co-related functions 

 of Nutrition and Reproduction, that these two domi- 

 nants being at work it could not but grow, and grow in 

 the way it has grown. When the dual nature of the 

 evolving forces is perceived ; when their reactions 

 upon one another are understood ; when the changed 

 material with which they have to work from time to 

 time, the further obstacles confronting them at every 

 stage, the new Environments which modify their 

 action as the centuries add their growths and disen- 

 cumber them of their withered leaves, — when all this 

 is observed, the whole social order falls into line. 

 From the dawn of life these two forces have acted 

 together, one continually separating, the other contin- 

 ually uniting ; one continually looking to its own 

 things, the other to the things of Others. Both are 

 great in Nature — but " the greatest of these is Love." 



