Feb., 1890. 
THE PRINCIPLES OE SOCIOLOGY. 
55 
digs from tlie earth. Knowledge acquired from sheer neces¬ 
sity grows into embryonic science ; interpretations and mis¬ 
interpretations of nature generate an infantile theology, and 
the “ play-impulse” causes the superfluous energies to well 
over in rude works of art and primitive epics. The process is 
in its nature progressive. For a community living under law, 
speaking and even writing an enriched language, trading, 
beginning to understand, or rather to misunderstand, its sur¬ 
roundings with some degree of intelligence—a community 
which can build, can paint, can sing, can work in metals—has 
not only modified its pristine condition, but has introduced 
new and active factors into its internal economy. The next 
generation is moulded by these new factors, which it in turn 
remodels, and hence a “ perpetual motion” is set up which 
cannot cease but with the extinction of the race. The growth 
and development of a society, as thus sketched out, bears an 
obvious analogy to the growth and development of an 
organism. Upon this analogy Mr. Spencer dwells in the 
second part of the “ Principles of Sociology,” but he takes care 
to note that it must be cautiously applied. The comparison 
is something more than a metaphor, something less than a 
definition. Any material or ideal whole which grows by 
assimilation and not by accretion, and which has interdepen¬ 
dent parts, co-ordinated for some general purpose, may be 
said to resemble an organism, and to obey the laws of organic 
evolution. Language grows in this way, so does science, so 
does art. In the case of society, however, the analogy is 
more tempting, because the social units are themselves 
organisms, and the faculties which are evolved in them must 
necessarily be manifested in the community. We must, 
however, be careful to remember that the conception fails us 
utterly in the ethical sphere. Mr. Spencer himself observes 
that while in the animal body some of the cells “ become 
specially sentient and others .entirely insentient,” in the 
body politic all the units are sentient; so that while in the 
animal the units exist for the benefit of the aggregate, in the 
society the aggregate exists for the benefit of the units. It 
might also be added that the units are intelligent as well as 
sentient, and that the society—not of course the material 
aggregate, but the ideal synthesis, without which not even 
the simplest community could exist for a moment—is present, 
though in varying degrees, in the mind and character of each 
of its members. Between the individual and the community 
there is no real antithesis, for the society lives in its units, 
just as truly as the units live in the society. 
