94 The Study of Animal Life- part i 



their conceptions of an " organism " as sociologists do in 

 regard to " society." 



It may be questioned, however, whether we need any 

 other designation for society than the word society sup- 

 plies, and whether the biological metaphor, with physical 

 associations still clinging to it, is not more illusory than help- 

 ful. For the true analogy is not between society and an 

 individual organism, but between human society and those 

 incipient societies which were before man was. Human 

 society is, or ought to be, an integrate — a spiritual integrate 

 — of organisms, of which the bee-hive and the ants' nest, 

 the community of beavers and the company of monkeys, 

 are like far-off prophecies. And in these, as in our own 

 societies, the modern conception of heredity leads us to 

 recognise that there is a very real unity even between 

 members physically discontinuous. 



The peculiarity of human society, as distinguished from 

 animal societies, depends mainly on the fact that man is a 

 social person, and knows himself as such. Man is the realis- 

 ation of antecedent societies, and it is man's realisation of 

 himself as a social person which makes human society what 

 it is, and gives us a promise of what it will be. As bio- 

 logists, and perhaps as philosophers, we are led to conclude 

 that man is determined by that whole of which he is a 

 part, and yet that his life is social freedom ; that society is 

 the means of his development, and at the same time its 

 end ; that man has to some extent reaUsed himself in society, 

 and that society has been to some extent realised in man. 



But I am slow to suppose that we, who in our ignorance 

 and lack of coherence are like the humbler cells of a great 

 body, have any adequate conception of the social organism 

 of which we form part. 



1 1 . Conclusions. • — I would in the main agree with 

 Kropotkine that " sociabihty is as much a law of nature as 

 mutual struggle " ; with Espinas that " Le milieu social est 

 la condition n^cessaire de la conservation et du renouvelle- 

 ment de la vie " ; and with Rousseau that " man did not 

 make society, but society made man." 



