Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/26

8 From these likenesses between the social organism and the individual organism, we must now turn to an extreme unlikeness. The parts of an animal form a concrete whole, but the parts of a society form a whole that is discrete. While the living units composing the one are bound together in close contact, the living units composing the other are free, not in contact, and more or less widely dispersed. How, then, can there be any parallelism?

Though this difference is fundamental and apparently puts comparison out of the question, yet examination proves it to be less than it seems. Presently I shall have to point out that complete admission of it consists with maintenance of the alleged analogy; but we will first observe how one who thought it needful might argue that even in this respect there is more kinship than a cursory glance shows.

He might urge that the physically-coherent body of an animal is not composed all through of living units, but that it consists in large measure of differentiated parts which the vitally active parts have formed, and which thereafter become semi-vital and in some cases almost un-vital. Taking as an example the protoplasmic layer underlying the skin, he might say that, while this consists of truly living units, the cells produced in it, changing into epithelium-scales, become inert protective structures; and, pointing to the insensitive nails, hair, horns, and teeth, arising from this layer, he might show that such parts, though components of the organism, are hardly living components. Carrying out the argument, he would contend that elsewhere in the body there exist such protoplasmic layers, from which grow the tissues composing the various organs—layers which alone remain fully alive, while the structures evolved from them lose their vitality in proportion as they are "specialized: instancing cartilage, tendon, and connective tissue, as showing in conspicuous ways this low vitality. From all which he would draw the inference that, though the body forms a coherent whole, its essential units, taken by themselves, form a whole which is coherent only throughout the protoplasmic layers.

And then would follow the argument that the social organism, rightly conceived, is much less discontinuous than it seems. He would contend that, as in the individual organism we include with the fully living parts the less living and not living parts which cooperate in the total activities, so, in the social organism, we must include not only those most highly-vitalized units, the human beings, who chiefly determine its phenomena, but also the various kinds of domestic animals, lower in the scale of life, which under the control of man coöperate with him, and even those far inferior structures the plants, which, propagated by human agency, supply materials for animal and human activities. In defense of this view he would point out how largely these lower classes of organisms, coexisting with men in societies, affect the structures and activities of the societies—how