Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/27

Rh the traits of the pastoral type depend on the natures of the creatures reared; and how, in settled societies, the plants producing food, materials for textile fabrics, etc., determine certain kinds of social arrangements and actions. After which he might insist that, since the physical characters, mental natures, and daily activities, of the human units are in part moulded by relations to these animals and vegetables which, living by their aid, and aiding them to live, enter so much into social life as even to be cared for by legislation, these lower living-things cannot rightly be excluded from the conception of the social organism. Hence would come his conclusion that when, with human beings, are incorporated the less vitalized beings, animal and vegetal, covering the surface occupied by the society, an aggregate results having a continuity of parts, more nearly approaching to that of an individual organism, and which is also like it in being composed of local aggregations of highly-vitalized units, imbedded in a vast aggregation of units of various lower degrees of vitality, which are in a sense produced by, modified by, and arranged by, the higher units.

But without accepting this view, and admitting that the discreteness of the social organism stands in marked contrast with the concreteness of the individual organism, the objection may still be adequately met.

Though coherence among its parts is a prerequisite to that cooperation by which the life of an individual organism is carried on, and though the members of a social organism, not forming a concrete whole, cannot maintain coöperation by means of physical influences directly propagated from part to part, yet they can and do maintain coöperation by another agency. Not in contact, they nevertheless affect one another through intervening spaces, both by emotional language, and by the language, oral and written, of the intellect. For carrying on mutually dependent actions it is requisite that impulses, adjusted in their kinds, amounts, and times, shall be conveyed from part to part. This requisite is fulfilled in living bodies by molecular waves, that are indefinitely diffused in low types, and in high types are carried along definite channels (the function of which has been significantly called internuncial). It is fulfilled in societies by the signs of feelings and thoughts, conveyed from person to person; at first in vague ways and only at short distances, but afterward more definitely and at greater distances. That is to say, the internuncial function, not achievable by stimuli physically transferred, is nevertheless achieved by language.

The mutual dependence of parts which constitutes organization is thus effectually established. Though discrete instead of concrete, the social aggregate is rendered a living whole.

But now, on pursuing the course of thought opened by this objection and the answer to it, we arrive at an implied contrast of great