THE ARGUMENTS FROM EMBRYOLOGY. 373 



iii tlieir most degraded members : instance the Acari among 

 the Articidata* 



We have before found that the facts of social organization 

 furnish us with hints towards interpreting the phenomena 

 exhibited in individual organisms. Let us see whether 

 analogies hence derived, do not help us here. A factory, or 

 other producing establishment, or a town made up of such 

 establishments, is an agency for elaborating some commodity 

 consumed by society at large ; and may be regarded as 

 analogous to a gland or viscus in an individual organism. If, 

 now, we inquire what is the primitive mode in which one of 

 these producing establishments grows up, we find it to be 

 this. A single worker, who himself sells the produce of his 

 labour, is the germ. His business increasing, he employs 

 helpers — his sons or others ; and having done this, he be- 

 comes a vendor not only of his own handiwork, but of that 

 of others. A further increase of his business compels him to 

 multiply his assistants, and his sale grows so rapid that he is 

 obliged to confine himself to the process of selling ; that is, 

 he ceases to be a producer, and becomes simply a channel 

 through which the produce of others is conveyed to the 

 public. Should his prosperity rise yet higher, he finds that 

 he is unable to manage even the sale of his commodities, and 

 has to employ others, probably of his own family, to aid him 

 in selling ; that is, to him as a main channel are now added 

 subordinate channels ; and so on continuously. Moreover, 

 * It may be urged that the mode of development is obviously related to the 

 size of the mass which is to be transformed into the embryo. Doubtless it is 

 true that direct transformation is characteristic of small ova, and indirect trans- 

 formation of large ova ; and some such connexion may be necessary. Very pos- 

 sibly that polarity of the physiological units, -which determines the specific structure 

 will not act throughout a large mass in such way as to transform it bodily into 

 the specific structure ; though it will thus act throughout a small mass. But that 

 the bulk of the ovum is not the sole cause of this difference of method, is proved 

 by the fact that in some cases where the development is comparatively direct, as 

 in Acteon, the ovum is very much larger than in cases where it is comparatively 

 indirect, as in minute insects. 



