Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions

1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a point of contrast which loses much of its importance, when we remember that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite – definiteness being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly in part determined by surrounding physical circumstances, as the forms of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be a further point of community.

2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears to be a fundamental distinction, is one which yet to a great extent disappears when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than might be supposed – types in which the living units essentially composing the mass, are dispersed through an inert substance, that can scarcely be called living in the full sense of the word. It is thus with some of the Protococci and with the Nostoceæ, which exist as cells imbedded in a viscid matter. It is so, too, with the Thalassicollæ– bodies that are made up of differentiated parts, dispersed through an undifferentiated jelly. And throughout considerable portions of their bodies, some of the Acalephæ exhibit more or less distinctly this type of structure.

Indeed, it may be contended that this is the primitive form of all organization; seeing that, even in the highest creatures, as in ourselves, every tissue developes out of what physiologists call a blastema – an unorganized though organizable substance, through which organic points are distributed. Now this is very much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men who make up a society, are physically separate and even scattered; yet that the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but is covered by life of a lower order which ministers to their life. The vegetation which clothes a country, makes possible the animal life in that country; and only through its animal and vegetal products can such a country support a human society. Hence the members of the body politic are not to be regarded as separated by intervals of dead space; but as diffused through a space occupied by life of a lower order. In our conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence, depends. And when we do this, we see that the citizens who make up a community, may be considered as highly vitalized units surrounded by substances of lower vitality, from which they draw their nutriment: much as in the cases above instanced. Thus, when examined, this apparent distinction in great part disappears.

3. That while the ultimate living elements of an individual organism, are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those of the social organism are capable of moving from place to place, seems a marked disagreement. But here, too, the disagreement is much less than would be supposed. For while citizens are locomotive in their private capacities, they are fixed in their public capacities. As farmers, manufacturers, or traders, men carry on their business at the same spots, often throughout their whole lives; and if they go away occasionally, they leave behind others to discharge their functions in their absence. Each great centre of production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some important organ, severally perform their functions for a time and then disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a society, the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change. Thus, in social life, as in the life of an animal, the units as well as the larger agencies formed of them, are in the main stationary as respects the places where they discharge their duties and obtain their sustenance. And hence the power of individual locomotion does not practically affect the analogy.

4. The last and perhaps the most important distinction, is, that while in the body of an animal, only a special tissue is endowed with feeling; in a society, all the members are endowed with feeling. Even this distinction, however, is by no means a complete one. For in some of the lowest animals, characterized by the absence of a nervous system, such sensitiveness as exists is possessed by all parts. It is only in the more organized forms that feeling is monopolized by one class of the vital elements. Moreover, we must remember that societies, too, are not without a certain differentiation of this kind. Though the units of a community are all sensitive, yet they are so in unequal degrees. The classes engaged in agriculture and laborious occupations in general, are much less susceptible, intellectually and emotionally, than the rest; and especially less so than the classes of highest mental culture. Still, we have here a tolerably decided contrast between bodies politic and individual bodies. And it is one which we should keep constantly in view. For it reminds us that while in individual bodies, the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or evil of life; in bodies politic, the same thing does not hold, or holds to but a very slight extent. It is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the whole; because the whole has a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society; since its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness; and since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State; but why, on the other hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts; instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life.

Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer light the points of analogy. While comparison makes definite the obvious contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism; it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be expected. The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts, the mobility of the parts, and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the social organism which have to be stated with considerable qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior classes of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict with the all-important analogies. That societies slowly augment in mass; that they progress in complexity of structure; that at the same time their parts become more mutually dependent; that their living units are removed and replaced without destroying their integrity; and further, that the extents to which they display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities; are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with all other things – these traits which in truth specially characterize organic bodies, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half of the organic kingdom from the other. The principles of organization are the same; and the differences are simply differences of application.

Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the comparison of a society to a living body; let us look at them in detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the more closely it is traced.

The lowest animal and vegetal forms —Protozoa and Protophyta– are chiefly inhabitants of the water. They are minute bodies, most of which are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are extremely simple in structure; and some of them, as the Rhizopods, almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves, which may either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or may continue attached. By the repetition of this process of fission, aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the Protophyta we have some classes, as the Diatomaceæ and the Yeast-plant, in which the individuals may be either separate, or attached in groups of two, three, four, or more; other classes in which a considerable number of individual cells are united into a thread (Conferva, Monilia); others in which they form a net work (Hydrodictyon); others in which they form plates (Ulva); and others in which they form masses (Laminaria, Agaricus): all which vegetal forms, having no distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called Thallogens. Among the Protozoa we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of Amœba-like creatures, massed together in a framework of horny fibres, constitute Sponge. In the Foraminifera, we see smaller groups of such creatures arranged into more definite shapes. Not only do these almost structureless Protozoa unite into regular or irregular aggregations of various sizes; but among some of the more organized ones, as the Vorticellæ, there are also produced clusters of individuals, proceeding from a common stock. But these little societies of monads, or cells, or whatever else we may call them, are societies only in the lowest sense: there is no subordination of parts among them – no organization. Each of the component units lives by and for itself; neither giving nor receiving aid. There is no mutual dependence, save that consequent on mere mechanical union.

Now do we not here discern analogies to the first stages of human societies? Among the lowest races, as the Bushmen, we find but incipient aggregation: sometimes single families; sometimes two or three families wandering about together. The number of associated units is small and variable; and their union inconstant. No division of labour exists except between the sexes; and the only kind of mutual aid is that of joint attack or defence. We see nothing beyond an undifferentiated group of individuals, forming the germ of a society; just as in the homogeneous groups of cells above described, we see only the initial stage of animal and vegetal organization.

The comparison may now be carried a step higher. In the vegetal kingdom we pass from the Thallogens, consisting of mere masses of similar cells, to the Acrogens, in which the cells are not similar throughout the whole mass; but are here aggregated into a structure serving as leaf, and there into a structure serving as root: thus forming a whole in which there is a certain subdivision of functions among the units; and therefore a certain mutual dependence. In the animal kingdom we find analogous progress. From mere unorganized groups of cells, or cell-like bodies, we ascend to groups of such cells arranged into parts that have different duties. The common Polype, from whose substance may be separated individual cells which exhibit, when detached, appearances and movements like those of the solitary Amœba, illustrates this stage. The component units, though still showing great community of character, assume somewhat diverse functions in the skin, in the internal surface, and in the tentacles. There is a certain amount of "physiological division of labour." Turning to societies, we find these stages paralleled in the majority of aboriginal tribes. When, instead of such small variable groups as are formed by Bushmen, we come to the larger and more permanent groups formed by savages not quite so low, we begin to find traces of social structure. Though industrial organization scarcely shows itself, except in the different occupations of the sexes; yet there is always more or less of governmental organization. While all the men are warriors and hunters, only a part of them are included in the council of chiefs; and in this council of chiefs some one has commonly supreme authority. There is thus a certain distinction of classes and powers; and through this slight specialization of functions, is effected a rude co-operation among the increasing mass of individuals, whenever the society has to act in its corporate capacity. Beyond this analogy in the slight extent to which organization is carried, there is analogy in the indefiniteness of the organization. In the Hydra, the respective parts of the creature's substance have many functions in common. They are all contractile; omitting the tentacles, the whole of the external surface can give origin to young hydræ; and when turned inside out, stomach performs the duties of skin, and skin the duties of stomach. In aboriginal societies such differentiations as exist are similarly imperfect. Notwithstanding distinctions of rank, all persons maintain themselves by their own exertions. Not only do the head men of the tribe, in common with the rest, build their own huts, make their own weapons, kill their own food; but the chief does the like. Moreover, in the rudest of these tribes, such governmental organization as exists is very inconstant. It is frequently changed by violence or treachery, and the function of ruling assumed by other members of the community. Thus between the rudest societies and some of the lowest forms of animal life there is analogy alike in the slight extent to which organization is carried, in the indefiniteness of this organization, and in its want of fixity.

A further complication of the analogy is at hand. From the aggregation of units into organized groups, we pass to the multiplication of such groups, and their coalescence into compound groups. The Hydra, when it has reached a certain bulk, puts forth from its surface a bud, which, growing and gradually assuming the form of the parent, finally becomes detached; and by this process of gemmation, the creature peoples the adjacent water with others like itself. A parallel process is seen in the multiplication of those lowly-organized tribes above described. One of them having increased to a size that is either too great for co-ordination under so rude a structure, or else that is greater than the surrounding country can supply with game and other wild food, there arises a tendency to divide; and as in such communities there are ever occurring quarrels, jealousies, and other causes of division, there soon comes an occasion on which a part of the tribe separates under the leadership of some subordinate chief, and migrates. This process being from time to time repeated, an extensive region is at length occupied with numerous separate tribes descended from a common ancestry. The analogy by no means ends here. Though in the common Hydra, the young ones that bud out from the parent soon become detached and independent; yet throughout the rest of the class Hydrozoa, to which this creature belongs, the like does not generally happen. The successive individuals thus developed continue attached; give origin to other such individuals which also continue attached; and so there results a compound animal. As in the Hydra itself, we find an aggregation of units which, considered separately, are akin to the lowest Protozoa; so here, in a Zoophyte, we find an aggregation of such aggregations. The like is also seen throughout the extensive family of Polyzoa or Molluscoida. The Ascidian Mollusks, too, in their many varied forms, show us the same thing: exhibiting, at the same time, various degrees of union subsisting among the component individuals. For while in the Salpæ the component individuals adhere so slightly that a blow on the vessel of water in which they are floating will separate them; in the Botryllidæ there exists a vascular connexion between them, and a common circulation.

Now in these various forms and degrees of aggregation, may we not see paralleled the union of groups of connate tribes into nations? Though in regions where circumstances permit, the separate tribes descended from some original tribe, migrate in all directions, and become far removed and quite separate; yet, in other cases, where the territory presents barriers to distant migration, this does not happen: the small kindred communities are held in closer contact, and eventually become more or less united into a nation. The contrast between the tribes of American Indians and the Scottish clans, illustrates this. And a glance at our own early history, or the early histories of continental nations, shows this fusion of small simple communities taking place in various ways and to various extents. As says M. Guizot, in his history of "The Origin of Representative Government," —

"By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union with each other… Soon inequality of strength is displayed among neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak, and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service. Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first instituted it, to take a wider range."

That is to say, the small tribes, clans, or feudal unions, sprung mostly from a common stock, and long held in contact as occupants of adjacent lands, gradually get united in other ways than by mere adhesion of race and proximity. A further series of changes begins now to take place; to which, as before, we shall find analogies in individual organisms. Returning again to the Hydrozoa, we observe that in the simplest of the compound forms, the connected individuals developed from a common stock, are alike in structure, and perform like functions: with the exception, indeed, that here and there a bud, instead of developing into a stomach, mouth, and tentacles, becomes an egg-sac. But with the oceanic Hydrozoa, this is by no means the case. In the Calycophoridæ, some of the polypes growing from the common germ, become developed and modified into large, long, sack-like bodies, which by their rhythmical contractions move through the water, dragging the community of polypes after them. In the Physophoridæ, a variety of organs similarly arise by transformation of the budding polypes; so that in creatures like the Physalia, commonly known as the "Portuguese Man-of-war," instead of that tree-like group of similar individuals forming the original type of the class, we have a complex mass of unlike parts fulfilling unlike duties. As an individual Hydra may be regarded as a group of Protozoa, which have become partially metamorphosed into different organs; so a Physalia is, morphologically considered, a group of Hydræ of which the individuals have been variously transformed to fit them for various functions.

This differentiation upon differentiation, is just what takes place in the evolution of a civilized society. We observed how, in the small communities first formed, there arises a certain simple political organization – there is a partial separation of classes having different duties. And now we have to observe how, in a nation formed by the fusion of such small communities, the several sections, at first alike in structures and modes of activity, gradually become unlike in both – gradually become mutually-dependent parts, diverse in their natures and functions. The doctrine of the progressive division of labour, to which we are here introduced, is familiar to all readers. And further, the analogy between the economical division of labour and the "physiological division of labour," is so striking, as long since to have drawn the attention of scientific naturalists: so striking, indeed, that the expression "physiological division of labour," has been suggested by it. It is not needful, therefore, that we should treat this part of our subject in great detail. We shall content ourselves with noting a few general and significant facts, not manifest on a first inspection.

Throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the Cœlenterata upwards, the first stage of evolution is the same. Equally in the germ of a polype and in the human ovum, the aggregated mass of cells out of which the creature is to arise, gives origin to a peripheral layer of cells, slightly differing from the rest which they include; and this layer subsequently divides into two – the inner, lying in contact with the included yelk, being called the mucous layer, and the outer, exposed to surrounding agencies, being called the serous layer: or, in the terms used by Prof. Huxley, in describing the development of the Hydrozoa– the endoderm and ectoderm. This primary division marks out a fundamental contrast of parts in the future organism. From the mucous layer, or endoderm, is developed the apparatus of nutrition; while from the serous layer, or ectoderm, is developed the apparatus of external action. Out of the one arise the organs by which food is prepared and absorbed, oxygen imbibed, and blood purified; while out of the other arise the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems, by whose combined actions the movements of the body as a whole are effected. Though this is not a rigorously-correct distinction, seeing that some organs involve both of these primitive membranes, yet high authorities agree in stating it as a broad general distinction. Well, in the evolution of a society, we see a primary differentiation of analogous kind; which similarly underlies the whole future structure. As already pointed out, the only manifest contrast of parts in primitive societies, is that between the governing and the governed. In the least organized tribes, the council of chiefs may be a body of men distinguished simply by greater courage or experience. In more organized tribes, the chief-class is definitely separated from the lower class, and often regarded as different in nature – sometimes as god-descended. And later, we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or nobles and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to each other. For, from its first appearance, the class of chiefs is that by which the external acts of the society are controlled: alike in war, in negotiation, and in migration. Afterwards, while the upper class grows distinct from the lower, and at the same time becomes more and more exclusively regulative and defensive in its functions, alike in the persons of kings and subordinate rulers, priests, and military leaders; the inferior class becomes more and more exclusively occupied in providing the necessaries of life for the community at large. From the soil, with which it comes in most direct contact, the mass of the people takes up and prepares for use, the food and such rude articles of manufacture as are known; while the overlying mass of superior men, maintained by the working population, deals with circumstances external to the community – circumstances with which, by position, it is more immediately concerned. Ceasing by-and-by to have any knowledge of, or power over, the concerns of the society as a whole, the serf-class becomes devoted to the processes of alimentation; while the noble class, ceasing to take any part in the processes of alimentation, becomes devoted to the co-ordinated movements of the entire body politic.

Equally remarkable is a further analogy of like kind. After the mucous and serous layers of the embryo have separated, there presently arises between the two, a third, known to physiologists as the vascular layer – a layer out of which are developed the chief blood-vessels. The mucous layer absorbs nutriment from the mass of yelk it encloses; this nutriment has to be transferred to the overlying serous layer, out of which the nervo-muscular system is being developed; and between the two arises a vascular system by which the transfer is effected – a system of vessels which continues ever after to be the transferrer of nutriment from the places where it is absorbed and prepared, to the places where it is needed for growth and repair. Well, may we not trace a parallel step in social progress?

Between the governing and the governed, there at first exists no intermediate class; and even in some societies that have reached considerable sizes, there are scarcely any but the nobles and their kindred on the one hand, and the serfs on the other: the social structure being such, that the transfer of commodities takes place directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher type, there grows up between these two primitive classes, another – the trading or middle class. Equally, at first as now, we may see that, speaking generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle layer in the embryo. For all traders are essentially distributors. Whether they be wholesale dealers, who collect into large masses the commodities of various producers; or whether they be retailers, who divide out to those who want them, the masses of commodities thus collected together; all mercantile men are agents of transfer from the places where things are produced to the places where they are consumed. Thus the distributing apparatus of a society, answers to the distributing apparatus of a living body; not only in its functions, but in its intermediate origin and subsequent position, and in the time of its appearance.

Without enumerating the minor differentiations which these three great classes afterwards undergo, we will merely note that throughout, they follow the same general law with the differentiations of an individual organism. In a society, as in a rudimentary animal, we have seen that the most general and broadly contrasted divisions are the first to make their appearance; and of the subdivisions it continues true in both cases, that they arise in the order of decreasing generality.

Let us observe next, that in the one case as in the other, the specializations are at first very incomplete; and become more complete as organization progresses. We saw that in primitive tribes, as in the simplest animals, there remains much community of function between the parts that are nominally different – that, for instance, the class of chiefs long remain industrially the same as the inferior class; just as in a Hydra, the property of contractility is possessed by the units of the endoderm as well as by those of the ectoderm. We noted also how, as the society advanced, the two great primitive classes partook less and less of each other's functions. And we have here to remark, that all subsequent specializations are at first vague, and gradually become distinct. "In the infancy of society," says M. Guizot, "everything is confused and uncertain; there is as yet no fixed and precise line of demarcation between the different powers in a state." "Originally kings lived like other landowners, on the incomes derived from their own private estates." Nobles were petty kings; and kings only the most powerful nobles. Bishops were feudal lords and military leaders. The right of coining money was possessed by powerful subjects, and by the Church, as well as by the king. Every leading man exercised alike the functions of landowner, farmer, soldier, statesman, judge. Retainers were now soldiers, and now labourers, as the day required. But by degrees the Church has lost all civil jurisdiction; the State has exercised less and less control over religious teaching; the military class has grown a distinct one; handicrafts have concentrated in towns; and the spinning-wheels of scattered farmhouses have disappeared before the machinery of manufacturing districts. Not only is all progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; but at the same time it is from the indefinite to the definite.

Another fact which should not be passed over, is that in the evolution of a large society out of an aggregation of small ones, there is a gradual obliteration of the original lines of separation – a change to which, also, we may see analogies in living bodies. Throughout the sub-kingdom Annulosa, this is clearly and variously illustrated. Among the lower types of this sub-kingdom, the body consists of numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its equal portion of intestines, or else its separate stomach; its equal portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord, and, perhaps, its separate pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large Crustacea, many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments. Now the segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times, the minor communities governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the same rude way; and were held together only by the fealty of their respective rulers to some suzerain. But along with the growth of a central power, the demarcations of these local communities disappeared; and their separate organizations merged into the general organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of law-made divisions, the process is analogous. Among the Anglo-Saxons, England was divided into tithings, hundreds, and counties: there were county courts, courts of hundred, and courts of tithing. The courts of tithing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have, however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.