Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/338

326 functions, all intermediate stages exist, at least theoretically, and the different human societies must be respectively compared with these successive animal stages on this low plane of life.

Looked at from this point of view society may be with much truth regarded as an organism, but it is obviously a very low form of organism. We are thus strikingly impressed with the great relative imperfection of society, and at the same time we are furnished with the means of seeing more clearly than in any other way the true relation of sociology to biology. The sociologist is dealing with an undeveloped stage of a great series of phenomena, and he may well ask himself the question: If such an inchoate being is capable of accomplishing such results as have been accomplished by the social organism, what may we not expect when, under the great law of development operating throughout the organic world this social organism shall have attained even the lower stages of integration manifested in the humbler animal creatures with which we are all familiar? And when we shrink with a sense of dread from the idea of any such state of social centralization, it is because we fail to realize the possibility of a homogeneous development throughout all the parts of society, including the necessary modification in the character of its individual members, to adapt them to such a regime of subordinate cooperation in the grand scheme. We fail to realize, on the one hand, the possibility of the central control being absolutely devoted to the welfare of the whole, as the animal consciousness is devoted to the welfare of the animal; and we fail to realize, on the other hand, the possibility of the willing obedience of every individual to the authority of the social center, for his own good, in the same way that every part of the body willingly submits to the authority of consciousness in its own interests. When we can rise to the position of divesting ourselves of these crude prejudices, due to our narrowed range of vision, and our inability to realize that what is now, need not always be, then will it be possible for the student of human society to look forward over the possible future, aided by the light which he receives from looking backward over the known past.