XLU.] HERBERT SPENCER ON THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 195 



in the brain ; and from this concentration or centrali- In it the 

 zation of life, it follows that the parts exist for the exists for 

 whole. In societies, on the contrary, the whole exists for tlie parts. 

 the parts. 



Societies, unlike individual organisms, have no repro- It 1ms no 

 ductive function. The resemblance, in some shape, of the ductive 

 social organism to the individual is a very old speculation ; function, 

 and it has been often inferred therefrom that societies, like ^^^. ^. 



' societies 



individuals, must be subject to decay and death. I think necessarily 

 that, so far as the analogy is good for anything, it tells the Ar<nimeut 

 other way.; for if death is a law of individual life, so is for the 

 birth ; and births, in a normal state of things, compen- 

 sate, and more than compensate, for deaths. But if 

 death is a law of social life, there is no law of birth to 

 compensate. 



KOTE. 



HERBERT SPENCER ON THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. 



It will be perceived that the ideas of the foregoing chapter are 

 borrowed from Herbert Spencer's very ingenious and able essay 

 on the same subject.^ I think his leading idea is true and most My objec- 

 valuable ; but, not satisfied with pointing out the general resem- tv^^.^u 

 blance between the principles of organization in the individual ject to H. 

 and the social organisms, he has attempted to draw a detailed ^pencer- 

 parallel between particular organs and functions in the two, in a 

 ■way which I think utterly untenable. This will be shown by 

 stating the various parallelisms which he discovers, in a double 

 tabular form. I need scarcely say that Herbert Spencer has not 

 made them out in tabular form himself. 



The working class. The nutritive system. 



The trading class. The circulating system. 



Commodities. Blood. 



1 Eepublished in the second volume of his collected Essays. 



O 2 



