SCIENCE -Supplement. 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25. 1887. 



BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY. 



In an article entitled ' Revolution and evolu- 

 tion,' printed in the Contemporary review for 

 September, Mr. Leon Metchnikoff wages war 

 against the opinions of those who would draw a 

 close parallel between the biological relations of a 

 community of zooids and the sociological condi- 

 tions under which an ideal association of human 

 individuals must occur. • 



According to Metchnikoflf, there is a complete 

 antithesis between the laws of the sociological and 

 the biological domains ; for the first have to do 

 with aggregations of individuals maintained by 

 co-operation, ' conscious or unconscious,' while 

 the second concerns only groupings which are 

 based on struggle. Then the author admits the 

 occurrence of the sociological law in the biological 

 community, but still strictly insists that indi- 

 vidual struggle and communal co-operation are 

 two forces of different kinds. He says (p. 433), 

 ' ' Whenever we see a phenomenon of association, 

 — be it in the shape of a vegetable or animal 

 organism, or that of a more perfect human com- 

 munity, — we cannot fail to detect something new, 

 as essentially distinct from the law of individual- 

 istic competition or struggle as that specific Dar- 

 winian law itself is distinct from the Newtonian 

 universal law of gravitation. That something is, 

 namely, the consensus of a number of more or 

 less individualized forces aiming at an end, not 

 personal to one of the allies, but common to them 

 all, and that is what we call co-operation.^'' The 

 conclusion seems to be, that, when we rise from the 

 biological into the sociological domain, we can 

 carry nothing useful from our toilsome studies on 

 the way in which the organisms of nature have 

 been built up and preserved, but must seek out a 

 new law of deliberate altruistic co-operation, 

 which is represented as having no relation to the 

 natural impulse of the individual toward his own 

 advancement. 



Far from presuming to deal directly with so com- 

 plex a question, it is the object of this paper to pre- 

 sent the truth as regards one side of the problem by 

 discovering, if possible, the true communal rela- 

 tions of the simplest differentiae making up the 

 most complex animal body. It will be pointed 

 out that biological data indicate no final antago- 



nism between co-operation and struggle, but, on the 

 contrary, that the one is the necessary antecedent 

 of the other. 



Living matter or protoplasm has, apparently, in 

 all its forms, the same general functions; and such 

 a study of relation as that proposed ought, if car- 

 ried out on right lines, to lead us to a conception 

 of the philosophy of protoplasm, by which is un- 

 derstood the main impulse or motive guiding indi- 

 vidual and determining collective action. 



Whatever may be the present and future sub- 

 jects of biological dispute, the tidal wave of 

 thought has lifted and grounded firmly beyond 

 the danger of overthrow one grand general idea, — 

 that every living organism may be anatomically 

 analyzed into a greater or less number of physio- 

 logical units — the cells or modified cells — which 

 contain the living matter, and which, in function, 

 though not in form, are like the parts they go to 

 make up. The accuracy of this analysis is not 

 affected by the differentiation of the cells them- 

 selves, nor would conclusions from it be disturbed 

 should each cell itself be proved to represent a 

 community of discrete factors. 



It has come to be a fundamental doctrine of 

 physiological teaching, that the higher animals 

 may be looked upon as communities of living 

 cells or modified cells whose functions determine 

 the action of the organs they compose, and which 

 are bound together by more or less not-living, in- 

 tercellular matter, made, or at least modified, by 

 the cells ; and yet it appears that some of the 

 most evident and important consequences that 

 arise from this communal relation of different 

 individuals, having needs and powers of all grades 

 of similarity and dissimilarity, have been gener- 

 ally neglected or misunderstood. The analogy 

 between the animal cell as related to the organ- 

 ism, and the human individual in his entirety as 

 related to society, is a very striking one. 



The cells of a body all take their nutriment from 

 the same general pabulum : they all have the same 

 general needs ; and as the food-supply is a result 

 of constructive effort, and therefore limited in 

 quantity, there must be a struggle for food (or a 

 struggle for existence) among the cells, which 

 would be more severe the more nearly alike their 

 individual needs. This statement will bear an 

 illustration. We know that a blood-free muscle 

 may, by artificial stimulation, be reduced to com- 

 plete exhaustion ; but, if a nutrient solution like 

 blood-serum be now passed through the blood- 



