Social organism

“ That social organization is presupposed in the adequate exercise of individual capacity is not to be doubted. But the social organism, interpreted after the relation of the organs of the body to each other and to the whole body, means that each individual has a certain limited place and function, requiring to be supplemented by the place and functions of the other organs. ”

“ For the so-called 'social organism,' although composed of innumerable individual personalities, is, with regard to each of its constituent units, a part of the objective world—just as the human brain would be, were each of its constituent cells of a construction sufficiently complex to yield a separate personality. ”

“ Benjamin Kidd in his famous book, "Social Evolution," that "the interests of the social organism and of the individuals comprising it at any particular time are actually antagonistic; they can never be reconciled ”

“ The sociologist is dealing with an undeveloped stage of a great series of phenomena, and he may well ask himself the question: If such an inchoate being is capable of accomplishing such results as have been accomplished by the social organism, what may we not expect when, under the great law of development operating throughout the organic world this social organism shall have attained even the lower stages of integration manifested in the humbler animal creatures with which we are all familiar? ”

“ The essential difference, therefore, between the animal organism and the social organism is that, in the former, the constituents exist only for the community, while in the latter the community exists only for the constituents. This transcendent value of the constituents is manifestly the result wholly of the moral or spiritual nature of man. ”

“ Spencer discusses the nature of society as an organism, the ideas of social growth, social structures and functions, and the division of the social organism into three systems of organs, namely, the sustaining, tlie distributing, and the regulating, answering to those of digestion, circulation, and nervous coördination, in the individual organism. The analogy between a society and a bodily organism is worked out with remarkable ingenuity, according to the sketch given by the author in the popular introduction to sociology already alluded to. ”

“ Biological Analogies.—The physical factor in society received emphasis the more because society itself was thought of as an organism resembling physical organisms and dependent upon similar laws. As a man's physical frame was essential to his activity and limited his energies, so the visible structure of social organization was deemed more important than social activity and function. ”

“ In our conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence, depend. 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. ”

“ And so on to the most elaborate phases of self-consciousness and social consciousness, to the metaphysician pondering the Ego, or the sociologist meditating on the Social Organism. Self and society go together, as phases [Pg 9] of a common whole. I am aware of the social groups in which I live as immediately and authentically as I am aware of myself ”

“ Not only must the pathology of the individual be studied, for the preservation of his physical system, but the pathology of human society must receive scientific investigation in order to perpetuate the social organism.
Modern Society a Machine of Great Complexity.—While the family remains as the most persistent primary unit of social organization out of which differentiated the great social functions of to-day, it now expresses but a very small part of the social complex. ”

“ A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. ”

“ There is this world-wide difference between the self-interrelatings of society and of the bodily organism: the social bond is a psychic relation and we cannot express it in biological terms or in any terms of physical force. ”

“ So dependent indeed on society is the individual that there has always been a certain plausibility in the old idea of the Stoics, countenanced by St. Paul, and so often revived in later days (as by Schäffle, Lilienfeld, and René Worms) , that society is an organism in which the individuals are merely cells depending for their significance on the whole to which they belong. ”

“ At least the earlier of these stages certainly perform various combined functions, and are understood to form, or wish to form, new individuals. We speak of the social organism, the body of the people, the soul of the people, and so on. ”

“ The progressive division of labor, on the one hand, and the centralization of society, on the other, prepare the social body for higher functions than in isolation, and proportionately increase the worth of its life. To see this more clearly, let us compare the personal and the social value of life in the five chief fields of vital activity—nutrition, reproduction, movement, sensation, and mental life.
The first need of the individual organism, self-maintenance, is met in a much more perfect manner in the modern state than it was formerly. ”

“ Meanwhile, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear that physiology and sociology will more or less interpret each other. Each affords its special facilities for inquiry. Relations of cause and effect clearly traceable in the social organism, may lead to the search for analogous ones in the individual organism ”

“ This is shown (a) in the growing dissatisfaction with the word "organism," (b) in the definition of social facts and (c) in the views as to what constitutes explanation of social facts.
It is objected that the word "organism" is a biological term which has exercised a seductive but unfortunate influence on sociological thought, nor is the objection met entirely by prefixing the adjective "social." Societies are rather êtres spirituels. ”

“ Human nature and social life.—Original nature is represented in human responses in so far as they are determined by the innate structure of the individual organism. The materials assembled under this head treat of inborn reactions as influenced, modified, and reconstructed by the structure of the social organization. ”

“ Biological investigation has opened wide the whole realm of life and emphasized the place of development in the physical organism. Psychological study has changed the basis of philosophy. Sociology has come with new interpretations of human life. Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence, maladjustments and isolation ”

“ The organic analogy method of studying human society attracted widespread attention, appealed strongly to the imagination even of scholars, but resulted in findings of negligible value. The parallelisms between an organism and society proved to be scientifically valueless, except as they revealed some of the connections between organic volution and social evolution. They created a considerable vocabulary of bio-social terminology which has been more of a hindrance than a help in social thinking. ”

“ There is a stage in the growth of every organism in which it cannot be told, except by the environment, whether the animal that is to be will be fish or reptile, monkey or man. And so with the new-born infant; whether the mind that is yet to awake to consciousness494 and power is to be English or German, American or Chinese—the mind of a civilized man or the mind of a savage—depends entirely on the social environment in which it is placed. ”

“ And from this basis the origin of institutions and customs, political, religious, and industrial, is traced. In developing these various customs and institutions, along with the corresponding sentiments, the course of social evolution has had the effect of gradually bringing out and cultivating those feelings and tendencies in the individual which promote the welfare of the organism, while other individual tendencies, hostile to social welfare, have been repressed. ”

“ So society, also, is composed of many structural elements (individuals) , having different pursuits, i. e., performing different social functions, and therefore mutually dependent, but all cooperating to maintain the life of the whole. Society, therefore, is in some sense an organism and subject to the laws of life and organization. ”

“ The sociologist then limits himself to drawing from these labors and coordinating the most general results. On the one side, social organisms being studied, he has only to classify them and to distinguish the type of each of the groups which they form, according to the complexity of its structure and of its functions. ”

“ It now appears that social evolution is most favored when this process begins with the smallest groups—the families: such groups, made coherent and definite in the way described, and afterward compounded and recompounded, having originated the highest societies. An instructive analogy between social organisms and individual organisms supports this inference. ”

“ Turn we now from the indirect influence which Biology exerts on Sociology, by supplying it with rational conceptions of social development and organization, to the direct influences it exerts by furnishing an adequate theory of the social unit—Man. ”

“ The "interdependence of function," which begins in the biological and ends in the ethical stage of human development, is the fundamental fact of all socio- psychological phenomena. The working unities which organisms formed, at first unconsciously, but finally consciously and pur- posefully, to sustain and develop the life-process, have alone made possible the development of that intercerebral process which in humanity we rightly term, by way of preeminence, the social process. ”

“ A young gentleman who was in the habit of talking glibly about the necessity of scientifically reorganising human society, declared to me one day that not only sociology, but also biology should be taken into consideration. Confessing my complete ignorance of the latter science, I requested him to enlighten me by giving me an instance of a biological principle which could be applied to social regeneration. ”

“ But did I not say there was truth in the biological conception of social life? Indeed I did, and I say so again, if social life is considered externally, and if we speak of a group as a living whole, where life is understood in its genuine sense, that is to say, biologically. And from this point of view, as that famous term, “physiological division of labor,” is borrowed from economical fact and theory, we may vice versa apply physiological terms to social life, considered externally. We may speak of organs and functions in a nation or society, or even with respect to mankind at large. ”

“ And just as Biology discovers certain general traits of development, structure, and function, holding throughout all organisms, others holding throughout certain great groups, others throughout certain sub-groups these contain; so Sociology has to recognize truths of social development, structure, and function, that are some of them universal, some of them general, some of them special. ”

“ Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the resultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment in which he lives, in the same way, all the social manifestations—moral, juridical or political—of a people are the resultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as these are the determining causes of the given economic organization which is the physical basis of life. ”

“ But the doctrine of biological continuity or organic evolution has destroyed the scientific basis of the conception. Morally, men are now concerned with the amelioration of the conditions of the common lot in this world. Social sciences recognize that associated life is not a matter35 of physical juxtaposition, but of genuine intercourse—of community of experience in a non-metaphorical sense of community. ”

“ Each variety of the human species, each race considered as a succession of individuals having certain innate mental qualities, has been evolved, then, not merely under the influence of the physical environment, like the animal species, but also and to an ever increasing extent under the influence of the social environment. The social environment we regard as consisting of two parts; namely, the social organisation and the body of social tradition ”

“ Biology opens up the field of life. Psychology investigates the structure and functions of the human mind, and shows that all activity is at base mental. At last the new sociology discloses human life in all its complex relationships, the function of the social mind, and the channels through which it works. ”

“ Just as biology, zoölogy, and botany cannot answer their questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete development, so also sociology cannot answer the question "What is society?" ”

“ Universal education and further centuries of custom may ultimately transform human character to this extent, until habit shall become at least a second nature and accomplish the same result that natural selection has accomplished in making gregarious animals and social insects; but thus far society, which is the product of the collective reason working for its own interests, is still dependent upon the momentary exercise of that reason in preventing its own overthrow. ”