CHAPTER XIV.

PREPARATION IN BIOLOGY.

THE parable of the sower has its application to the progress of Science. Time after time new ideas are sown and do not germinate, or, having germinated, die for lack of fit environments, before they are at last sown under such conditions as to take root and flourish. Among other instances of this, one is supplied by the history of the truth here to be dwelt onthe dependence of Sociology on Biology. Even limiting the search to our own society, we may trace back this idea nearly three centuries. In the first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, it is enunciated as clearly as the state of knowledge in his age made possible-more clearly, indeed, than was to be expected in an age when science and scientific ways of thinking had advanced so little. Along with the general notion of natural law-along, too, with the admission that human actions, resulting as they do from desires guided by knowledge, also in a sense conform to law; there is a recognition of the fact that the formation of societies is determined by the attributes of individuals, and that the growth of a governmental organization follows from the natures of the men who have associated themselves the better to satisfy their needs. Entangled though this doctrine is with a theological doctrine, through the restraints of which it has to break, it is expressed with considerable clearness: there needs but better definition and further development to make it truly scientific.

Among re-appearances of this thought in subsequent English writers, I will here name only one, which I happen to have observed in An Essay on the History of Civil Society, published a century ago by Dr. Adam Ferguson. In it the first part treats "of the General Characteristics of Human Na

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ture." Section I., pointing out the universality of the gregarious tendency, the dependence of this on certain affections and antagonisms, and the influences of memory, foresight, language, and communicativeness, alleges that these facts must be admitted as the foundation of all our reasoning relative to man. Though the way in which social phenomena arise out of the phenomena of individual human nature, is seen in but a general and vague way, yet it is seen-there is a conception of causal relation.

Before this conception could assume a definite form, it was necessary both that scientific knowledge should become more comprehensive and precise, and that the scientific spirit should be strengthened. To M. Comte, living when these conditions were fulfilled, is due the credit of having set forth with comparative definiteness, the connexion between the Science of Life and the Science of Society. He saw clearly that the facts presented by masses of associated men, are facts of the same order as those presented by groups of gregarious creatures of inferior kinds; and that in the one case, as in the other, the individuals must be studied before the assemblages can be understood. He therefore placed Biology before Sociology in his classification of the sciences. Biological preparation for sociological study, he regarded as needful not only because the phenomena of corporate life, arising out of the phenomena of individual life, can be rightly co-ordinated only after the phenomena of individual life have been rightly co-ordinated; but also because the methods of inquiry which Biology uses, are methods to be used by Sociology. In various ways, which it would take too much space here to specify, he exhibits this dependence very satisfactorily. It may, indeed, be contended that certain of his other beliefs prevented him from seeing all the implications of this dependence. When, for instance, he speaks of "the intellectual anarchy which is the main source of our moral anarchy "—when he thus discloses the faith, pervading his Course of Positive Philosophy, that true theory would bring right practice; it becomes clear that the relation between the attributes of citizens and the phenomena of societies is incorrectly seen by him; the relation is far too deep a one to be changed by mere change of ideas. Again, denying, as he did, the indefinite modifiability of spe

cies, he almost ignored one of the cardinal truths which Biology yields to Sociology-a truth without which sociological interpretations must go wrong. Though he admits a certain modifiability of Man, both emotional and intellectual, yet the dogma of the fixity of species, to which he adhered, kept his conceptions of individual and social change within limits much too specific. Hence arose, among other erroneous preconceptions, this serious one, that the different forms of society presented by savage and civilized races all over the globe, are but different 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 re-divergent groups. Nor did

he arrive at that conception of the Social Science which alone fully affiliates it 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 distinct 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 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 connexion.

Figures of speech, which often mislead by conveying the notion of complete likeness where only slight similarity 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. And yet metaphors are here more than metaphors in the ordinary sense. They are devices of speech hit upon to suggest a truth at first dimly perceived, but which grows clearer the more carefully the evidence is examined. That there is a real analogy between an individual organism and a social organism, becomes undeniable when certain necessities determining structure are seen to govern them in common.

Mutual dependence of parts is that which initiates and guides organization of every kind. So long as, in a mass of living matter, all parts are alike, and all parts similarly live and grow without aid from one another, there is no organization: the undifferentiated aggregate of protoplasm thus characterized, belongs to the lowest grade of living things. Without distinct faculties, and capable of but the feeblest movements, it cannot adjust itself to circumstances; and is at the mercy of environing destructive actions. The changes by which this structureless mass becomes a structured mass, having the characters and powers possessed by what we call an organism, are changes through which its parts lose their original likenesses; and do this while assuming the unlike kinds

of activity for which their respective positions towards one another and surrounding things fit them. These differences of function, and consequent differences of structure, at first feebly marked, slight in degree, and few in kind, become, as organization progresses, definite and numerous; and in proportion as they do this the requirements are better met. Now structural traits expressible in the same language, distinguish lower and higher types of societies from one another; and distinguish the earlier stages of each society from the later. Primitive tribes show no established contrasts of parts. At first all men carry on the same kind of activities, with no dependence on one another, or but occasional dependence. There is not even a settled chieftainship; and only in times of war is there a spontaneous and temporary subordination to those who show themselves the best leaders. From the small unformed social aggregates thus characterized, the progress is towards social aggregates of increased size, the parts of which acquire unlikenesses that become ever greater, more definite, and more multitudinous. The units of the society as it evolves, fall into different orders of activities, determined by differences in their local conditions or their individual powers; and there slowly result permanent social structures, of which the primary ones become decided while they are being complicated by secondary ones, growing in their turns decided, and so on.

mon.

Even were this all, the analogy would be suggestive; but it is not all. These two metamorphoses have a cause in comBeginning with an animal composed of like parts, severally living by and for themselves, on what condition only can there be established a change, such that one part comes to perform one kind of function, and another part another kind? Evidently each part can abandon that original state in which it fulfilled for itself all vital needs, and can assume a state in which it fulfils in excess some single vital need, only if its other vital needs are fulfilled for it by other parts that have meanwhile undertaken other special activities. One portion of a living aggregate cannot devote itself exclusively to the respiratory function, and cease to get nutriment for itself, unless other portions that have become exclusively occupied in absorbing nutriment, give it a due