Now, one would have thought that a vertebrate animal with cerebral masses was superior to those individuals that moved about in an indifferentiated jelly; but, considering all the uncomplimentary things Mr. Spencer says about our legislators, we are led to have dreadful suspicions as to the species of animal to whose cerebral masses they correspond; or else, "in some respects," apparently, they are not like cerebral masses at all: and we conclude that Mr. Spencer (like Professor Drummond, who has found. all the dogmas of Calvin in the System of Synthetic Philosophy) has mistaken an ingenious illustration for a scientific fact.

It might be said that this last objection is sufficiently met by the answer given in Essays, vol. iii., pp. 6, 7, to Professor Huxley; but we cannot see what justifies Mr. Spencer (except an intelligible desire to make his theories fit together) in arbitrarily comparing the negatively regulative functions of Government with those of the cerebro-spinal nervous system, and leaving everything else for the visceral nervous system. Apparently the social organism in Mr. Spencer's ideal State, where Government is no longer needed, ought to resemble an animal drunk or asleep, with the brain doing as little as possible (p. 8).

Thus, from the doctrine of the social organism, as expounded by Mr. Spencer, we find it difficult to arrive at any coherent theory of politics. In fact, the conception of society as an organism seems to admit of more easy applications to the defence of just those very views about the State which Mr. Spencer most dislikes; and, though the conception of organism has its value in helping political thinking out of the confusions of individualism, if it be taken as the final key to all mysteries, it leads to new confusions of its own, for which it would be absurd to blame Mr. Spencer.

§4. INDIVIDUALISM.

But not only do we find Mr. Spencer's politics defective because he takes the idea of organism as final, but because he does not really get as much out of the idea as he might. In spite of the constant parade of biological illustration, it would appear that in his political thinking Mr. Spencer has not advanced beyond the arithmetical and mechanical conceptions of society which prevailed in the days. when it was still a striking thing to say, "Constitutions are not made, but grow." Society, to Mr. Spencer, is only an aggregate of individuals. The individuals are assumed, to start with.

They are

put together, and society is made; and Mr. Spencer criticises the mode of its making. He has not got beyond Hobbes.

Of course, this charge will be indignantly denied. But the proof of it is staring us in the face: The Man VERSUS the State. In the very title of these essays, and throughout, it is assumed, as much as by Mill, that every increase of the powers of Government (Mr. Spencer uses "Government" and "State" as convertible terms 1) implies an equivalent decrease in the liberties of individuals. Now, this is a way of speaking which produces accurate-looking, quasiscientific, abstractly logical expressions; but it is profoundly "inorganic."

An organism is not an

Let

1 They are certainly often so used in ordinary language; but it is a pity not to take the terms in a more precise sense. us call society organised the State. The Constitution is the organisation as distinguishable in thought from the society. Government is either equivalent to Constitution (as when we talk of different forms of government), or is used specially for the administrative or executive element in the State; i.e. for what appears specially as the head, or ruling part, of the State. Thus, of course, when the State acts, the Government acts, and vice versâ ; and so the words come to be interchanged. Where the Germans say Staat, we frequently use "nation,” in a somewhat more definite sense than their Volk. Our word "people," again, is often the same as the German Volk, or Latin populus, and more precise than the German Nation. See Note A, "On the Distinction between Society and the State."

equation. In a healthy body-I must beg Mr. Spencer's pardon for using smaller words than seem to be proper in the mouths of those who deal with "completely unified knowledge "—in a healthy body all the parts may develop together. Because a man has strong arms, he has not therefore weak legs. Unfortunately, brain and muscle do not always grow together; but this we regard as an imperfection. Now, if society is an organism, a State in which the powers of Government are abnormally large might be like a body with a brain overgrown at the expense of sinew and flesh (though, indeed, if Mr. Spencer be right in classing such States under the species militant, the muscular beast of prey might seem the better analogue); but a perfectly healthy, well-developed society ought to resemble a body in which well-developed brain and well-developed limb go together and help each other. If this is not so, then it ought to follow that society is not an organism, which, according to Mr. Spencer, is absurd; and yet it is Mr. Spencer himself who contradicts the possibility of Government and individual gaining in strength together.

A sentence from the essay on "The Sins of Legislators" will supply a further proof of the mechanical, or rather the merely arithmetical, character of Mr.

Spencer's political thinking. "Social activities," we are there told, "are the aggregate results of the desires of individuals who are severally seeking satisfaction" (p. 62). Nay, even in the very Essay on the Social Organism, Mr. Spencer speaks of the office of Parliament as that of "averaging the interests of the various classes in the community," as the brain.

averages the interests of life." If this remark is to be taken seriously, there ought to be a science of political arithmetic, parallel I suppose to the calculus of pleasure. But such a mode of speaking and thinking about society would imply that the acts of a combination of individuals are the same as a combination of the acts done by the same individuals, a supposition which is not true even of voluntary, temporary and artificial associations. A society of one hundred individuals for the promotion of a particular end is something more than the aggregate of a hundred individuals working independently towards this same end. But, even according to Mr. Spencer, the State does not arise from a voluntary combination as on Hobbes' theory; and it certainly is not a temporary combination. Therefore, à fortiori, this arithmetic cannot apply to the State. Least of all can it do so if society is an organism.

But apart from the question of logical consistency,