Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/342

328 of these doctrines, and learn expertness in the use of this method by the previous study of biology.

Now, there is, or shortly will be (for it is scarcely yet organized), a science far higher than any yet mentioned—a science which is the crown of human knowledge—a science to which all others are subsidiary—sociology. I wish to show the close connection between this science and biology. I wish to show that it only becomes truly scientific by being connected with biology, and thus placed at the head of the hierarchy. I wish to show that whatever of recent advance has been made in this science has been made by the application of the characteristic doctrines and methods of biology. I wish to show that biology is an important—yea, more, the most important—preparatory school for the study of sociology.

—As already stated, the fundamental idea of biology is life. Under this general idea there are two subordinate ideas or doctrines, viz., organization and progress by evolution. Life is maintained through an organized structure. Life advances from lower to higher grades by evolution. Now, is not society, too, endowed with life? Is not the social life maintained by organization; and does it not advance from lower to higher grades by a process of evolution? Let us examine in more detail:

—A living organized structure, or an organism, may be defined as a structure consisting of many different parts, having different forms, and performing different functions, but all coöperating to one given end, viz., the life, growth, and development, of the whole. The animal organism is composed wholly of cells, as a building is of bricks; all animal functions are performed by cells; growth is continual formation of new cells; reproduction is the separation of cells to form a new colony of cells. But the constituent cells of an organism, especially one of the higher organisms, are not all alike. On the contrary, they are as diverse in form as they are in function. The many functions of the body are parceled out among the cells by division of labor, and thus there results an absolute mutual dependence of parts. So society, also, is composed of many structural elements (individuals), having different pursuits, i. e., performing different social functions, and therefore mutually dependent, but all cooperating to maintain the life of the whole. Society, therefore, is in some sense an organism and subject to the laws of life and organization.

Again, as in the animal organism, the structural elements, the cells, are far more numerous than the functions: many cells of similar form aggregate to form organs, all the cells of one organ coöperating to perform its function, and all the organs cooperating for the life of the whole organism. So in the social organism, the structural elements (individuals) being much more numerous than the social functions, many individuals of like pursuits or functions aggregate into corporations, professions, trades-unions, etc. These are the organs of