Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/344

330 and interaction between the different kinds constituting a fauna and flora still more complex, and a struggle for life still fiercer than now exists, then is the ideal not yet reached.

So society, also, has reached its present highly-organized condition only gradually, by a process of differentiation. In the early stages of society the constituent elements are all alike, and each performs, though in an imperfect manner, all the social functions necessary in this early condition. As society advances, the pursuits of man become more and more different, the social function of each more and more limited, until each is confined to one social function only. Concurrently with this differentiation of pursuits, the independent life of the constituents, absolutely perfect at first, is merged more and more into the common life of society, with increasing mutual dependence, as in the animal organism; and yet, alas! with increasing selfish antagonism and competitive struggle for life, as in the organic kingdom. Here, too, from the purely material point of view, the ideal, as in the animal organism, is complete loss of independent life—the complete merging of the individual independence into the common life of society—the identification of individual life with social function. Here, too, from the same point of view, the ideal, as in the organic kingdom, is the highest high and the lowest low, and the extremest diversity. The higher becomes the high, the lower sinks the low, and the more extreme the diversity—the more complete the loss of individuality and merging of constituent life into social function—the more perfect the mutual dependence, and yet the fiercer the antagonism and struggle—the nearer do we approach the ideal. This is manifestly the ideal of material organization, and therefore of society, from a purely material point of view. If this ideal is not only undesirable but impossible—if our whole better nature shrinks aghast from its realization—it is because it takes no cognizance of our higher and distinctively human nature, i. e., our spiritual or moral nature; it is because the law of our spiritual or moral is different and even antagonistic to the law of our animal or material nature. The relation of material units is by mutual dependence, and yet antagonism: the relation of moral units is by mutual sympathy and love. The existence of a moral nature limits the laws of a purely material organization. The essential difference, therefore, between the animal organism and the social organism is that, in the former, the constituents exist only for the community, while in the latter the community exists only for the constituents. This transcendent value of the constituents is manifestly the result wholly of the moral or spiritual nature of man.

There are, then, three stages of social advance: 1. Gregariousness, or loose, unorganized association of similar constituents: this corresponds in biology to the simplest form of cellular aggregation. 2. Gradually increasing differentiation and consequent merging of the constituent life into the common life by limitation of function, and