CHAPTER XLTI. 



INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 



IS an 

 orffanism. 



IN the last two chapters I have shown how the prin- 

 ciples of habit, variation, and natural selection apply 

 to the historical sciences, as well as to the sciences of life 

 and mind. In addition to these, I purpose in this chapter 

 Division of to speak of a special and very remarkable set of resem- 

 the°or"an- ^^^i^ces between the bodily life of an organism and the life 

 ism and in of a society. The fundamental law of vital and of social 

 organization is the same ; namely, division of labour. The 

 Society definition of organization is functional relation between 

 parts ; and, under this definition, a society where labour is 

 divided — or, to speak more accurately, a society where 

 employments are distributed — is not metaphorically but 

 literally an organism. The expression, " physiological divi- 

 sion of labour," has been borrowed by biology from political 

 science, to signify what is called, in less suggestive lan- 

 guage, the " specialization of functions." But to speak of 

 the division of labour, whether in the individual or in the 

 social organism, expresses only half the truth. The more 

 unlike are the members one to another, the completer is 

 the division of labour between them, and the completer 

 is also their mutual dependence ; and the greater is the 

 power of the entire organism, by means of the combined 

 action of its various unlike members, to achieve results 

 which coidd not be achieved by any union of like parts. 

 To use technical language : tlie greater is the differentia- 

 tion, the completer is also the integration. This, which is 



