Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/274

 260 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

two of the leaders in the modern sociological movement, reiterating and refinforcing, each in its way, this doctrine of the social organism. Both authors are thoroughly imbued with the idea, both are equipped with all the knowledge that can be brought to bear upon the subject, and both books are literally packed with facts and arguments in its support. As we go deeper and deeper into the question and see these facts and arguments piled upon one another like Ossa upon Pelion and Olympus upon Ossa, we feel fairly crushed by their weight. How pre- sumptuous would be any attempt at criticism ! Indeed do not these able and adroit advocates disarm all possible criticism by fully stating every objection that has ever been raised and then fully answering it ? It would seem that nothing is left to do but to let the objections and their answers stand and exert each its legitimate influence upon differ- ently constituted minds^ Still there are some who may be capable of occasionally pausing even in the midst of such a surging torrent and of imagining themselves for the moment out of the stream and quiet spectators upon its banks. From such a standpoint there are certain very general questions, questions that may have no direct relation to any of the specific tenets that are being defended, that may arise and crowd out for the time being the particular considerations that are being urged. To change the figure, some minds are so constituted that they can and will from time to time suspend all regular business in order to take stock and find out whether their business is running at a profit or a loss.

One of the first of these questions is: What is an analogy? In biology, which is the standpoint of both our authors and of all defend- ers of the social organism theory in whatever form, this word has a very definite meaning a technical usage viz., physiological without anatomical similarity. It is contrasted with homology, which is ana- tomical similarity irrespective of function. If this is all they mean by the analogy between society and an organism, there seems to be no objection to pursuing it to its utmost extent and determining how far social functions resemble organic functions, recognizing all the time that there is no real morphological or structural resemblance any more than there is between the wing of a bat and that of a bird. What, then, does Senator Lilienfeld mean by his oft-repeated expression, "real anal- ogy " ? Does he mean that there are homologies ? It seems difficult to interpret him otherwise. Not only in the present treatise, but through- out his great five-volume work, and, later than either, in a pamphlet