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THE SOCIAL ORGANISM 255

cell, and the body consists of simple connective tissue
(expressed in unity of speech, etc.), and of various
differentiated tissues, such as sensory and motor
apparatus. The comparison is as interesting as a
game, but when we find writers speaking of the
social ectoderm and endoderm, and so forth, we can-
not but feel that the metaphor is being stretched to
the breaking-point.

Spencer was himself quite conscious that the meta-
phor had its limitations, for he indicates four contrasts
between a society and an individual organism.

(1) Societies have no specific external forms.

(2) The units of an organism are physically con-

tinuous, but the units of a society are dis-
persed persons.

(3) The elements of an organism are mostly fixed

in their relative positions; while units of a
society are capable of moving from place to
place.

(4) In the body of an animal only a special tissue

is endowed with feeling; in a society all
the members are so endowed. The social
nervous system is happily wider than the
government.

There are other limitations, e.g., that the social
organism does not seem to pass necessarily through a
curve of life ending in senility and death; that when
a particular form disappears it is usually by being
incorporated into another in whose life it shares.

As it appears to us the real analogy is between a
human societary form and an animal societary form,
such as an ant-hill or a bee-hive or a beaver-village,
and not between a society and an individual organism.



	THE SOCIAL ORGANISM 255 cell, and the body consists of simple connective tissue (expressed in unity of speech, etc.), and of various differentiated tissues, such as sensory and motor apparatus. The comparison is as interesting as a game, but when we find writers speaking of the social ectoderm and endoderm, and so forth, we can- not but feel that the metaphor is being stretched to the breaking-point. Spencer was himself quite conscious that the meta- phor had its limitations, for he indicates four contrasts between a society and an individual organism. (1) Societies have no specific external forms. (2) The units of an organism are physically con- tinuous, but the units of a society are dis- persed persons. (3) The elements of an organism are mostly fixed in their relative positions; while units of a society are capable of moving from place to place. (4) In the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with feeling; in a society all the members are so endowed. The social nervous system is happily wider than the government. There are other limitations, e.g., that the social organism does not seem to pass necessarily through a curve of life ending in senility and death; that when a particular form disappears it is usually by being incorporated into another in whose life it shares. As it appears to us the real analogy is between a human societary form and an animal societary form, such as an ant-hill or a bee-hive or a beaver-village, and not between a society and an individual organism.