general understanding of the laws and processes of biological growth as they are related to and distinguished from those exemplified in the evolution of inorganic structures.
On the other hand, theorists of the socialistic school have eagerly seized upon the assertion made by evolutionary writers that "society is an organism," and, by exaggerating the analogies between social and biological processes, have thence logically deduced their own doctrine of the supremacy of the state over the individual, claiming for it scientific and evolutionary sanction. Though Mr. Spencer has carefully guarded himself against this misapprehension, and his own philosophy of society is diametrically opposed to that of socialism, it is often claimed by writers of this school, and even by those who are of quite another way of thinking,[1] that it is only by a breach of logical sequence that he escapes socialistic conclusions.
Mr. Spencer, however, early noted the important fact that society differs from the higher products of biological evolution in that no social sensorium is discoverable; and in Justice he reaffirms and emphasizes this distinction in discussing the nature of the state. "The end to be achieved by society in its corporate capacity that is, by the state," he declares, "is the welfare of its units; for the society having as an aggregate no sentiency, its preservation is a desideratum only as subserving individual sentiencies." He subsequently repeats this statement with renewed emphasis, evidently regarding it as of great importance.
In organic structures the unit or cell exists for the sake of the completed organism; its individual sentiency, if it possesses such a psychic quality, is subordinate to the sentiency of the organic whole. In society, however, the fact is the reverse: the social organism exists for the sake of the individual, or social unit. This relation of the individual to the social structure is one unquestionably which should be borne in mind and given its due weight in the application of biological analogies to the solution of the problems of society. Mr. Spencer's recognition of it completely absolves him from the logic of socialistic conclusions.
The resemblances between social and organic structures, however, are more notable and important than their differences, and are recognized not only by philosophical students of society, on the one hand, but also by eminent biologists on the other. Prof. Haeckel, speaking of the structure of animal tissues, says: "All the numerous tissues of the animal body, such as the entirely dissimilar tissues of the nerves, muscles, bones, outer skin, mucous skin, and other similar parts, are originally composed of cells; and the same is true of the various tissues of the vegetable body.
- ↑ Cf. Mr. George Gunton, in The Principles of Social Economics, pp. 298-810.
