Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/842

820 elements of society to a central authority, whether that of the patriarch, the tribal head, or the tribal assembly. The individual has no economic, legal, or moral independence. But as society develops, the control which the whole exerts over the parts through authority and custom is gradually diminished. The individuality of the members of the social body becomes more and more marked. Individual freedom and responsibility are definitely recognized. Thus, the development of society has meant "the development of individuality in each of its members." It is a development of persons; the "social consciousness exists only in the discrete social elements which have become individual."

In a word, social evolution is accompanied by a growing individualization of the component elements of society, whereas animal development leads to ever-stronger concentration of the life of the organism in a single part.

This difference between the physical organism and society is fundamental and essential. It is far more striking than the superficial likenesses ingeniously adduced by Mr, Spencer. His analogy tends to obscure the real nature of social relations. Unless used with cautious qualifications it "suggests false and one-sided views" and thus hinders the progress of sociology. The biological analogy has, it may be conceded, a certain value as a convenient way of describing some of the aspects of social structure and growth. It may aid the student to comprehend certain facts, but, if followed blindly, it will lead him to overlook other facts of even greater importance.

The biological analogy has been carried to absurd lengths by some writers. There is wearisome enumeration of social aggregates and organs, and exhaustive description of the social nervous system. We learn that the individual may be either a communicating cell or a terminal cell, otherwise known as an end organ. The girl in the central telephone office acts as a communicating cell when she telephones to Mr. Smith a message from Mr. Brown." But when, Mr. Smith having asked her the exact time by the chronometer in the exchange, she looks at the dial and reports her observation to him, she is primarily a terminal cell or end organ." The lookout man at sea, on the other hand, is invariably an end organ. This is far-fetched and fanciful. To clothe mere commonplaces in the borrowed rags and tags of biological terminology is not social science, nor does it aid one to get a correct conception of social reality.

The unsettled state of sociological thought which has been here set forth is a natural result of the peculiar difficulties that stand in the way of the social sciences. These have been described by Mr.