Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/612

596 stages in the evolution of one form: the truth being, rather, that social types, like types of individual organisms, do not form a series, but are classifiable only in divergent and redivergent groups. Nor did he arrive at that conception of the Social Science by which alone it becomes fully affiliated upon the simpler sciences—the conception of it as an account of the most complex forms of that continuous redistribution of matter and motion which is going on universally. Only when it is seen that the transformations passed through, during the growth, maturity, and decay of a society, conform to the same principles as do the transformations passed through by aggregates of all orders, inorganic and organic—only when it is seen that the process is in all cases similarly determined by forces, and is not scientifically interpreted until it is expressed in terms of those forces—only then is there reached the conception of Sociology as a science, in the complete meaning of the word.

Nevertheless, we must not overlook the greatness of the step made by M. Comte. His mode of contemplating the facts was truly philosophical. Containing, along with special views not to be admitted, many thoughts that are true as well as large and suggestive, the introductory chapters to his "Sociology" show a breadth and depth of conception beyond any previously reached. Apart from the tenability of his sociological doctrines, his way of conceiving social phenomena was much superior to all previous ways; and among other of its superiorities, was this recognition of the dependence of Sociology on Biology.

Here leaving the history of this idea, let us turn to the idea itself. There are two independent and equally-important ways in which these sciences are connected. In the first place, all social actions being determined by the actions of individuals, and all actions of individuals being vital actions that conform to the laws of life at large, a rational interpretation of all social actions implies knowledge of the laws of life. In the second place, a society as a whole, considered apart from its living units, presents phenomena of growth, structure, and function, like those of growth, structure, and function in an individual body; and these last are needful keys to the first. We will begin with this analogical connection.

Figures of speech, which very often mislead by conveying the notion of complete likeness where only distant analogy exists, occasionally mislead by making an actual correspondence seem a fancy. A metaphor, when used to express a real resemblance, raises a suspicion of mere imaginary resemblance, and so obscures the perception of intrinsic kinship. It is thus with the phrases "body politic," "political organization," and others, which tacitly liken a society to a living creature: they are assumed to be phrases having a certain convenience but expressing no fact—tending rather to foster a fiction.