Mr. Herbert Spencer has familiarised us with the lesson that in politics
and social experiments it is the unforeseen and unintended results of
legislation which are far the most important, and that the industrial
organisation of the country, or we may now say of the world, is not the
fulfilment of any design preconceived by any governmental agency, but
the unintended result of innumerable actions on the part of men who
never dreamed that their action would have any such outcome. The reason
of this is to be sought in the fact that society is an organism and that
its growth follows the same laws as those which regulate the structural
development of an amœba or a rhizopod. Thus, both society and the
animal organism must be fed. To be fed, both must appropriate nutriment
from the environment. That nutriment must be taken up and must be
distributed to all parts of the organism, social or animal, if all parts
are to be fed--and all must be fed, because all are mutually dependent,
and to neglect one would disorganise the whole. Channels of
communication must be established between all parts, in order that food
may be conveyed from the organ which took it from the environment to the
organs which require it for support. What marks the process of
evolution in both cases is the increasing division of labour and the
increasing interdependence of the parts on one another. The animal
organism, like the social organism, is made up of a multitude of living
units, each one of which is continually adjusting itself to the
requirements of all the rest. The increasing complexity in the structure
of an animal organism is possible only because the living units of one
part take upon themselves new functions, or devote themselves
exclusively to one function, in order to benefit the units of a distant
part. If they purposed or were purposed to produce that result, they
could not behave differently or better. But this appearance of purpose
is mere semblance: the minute cells of an animal organism have no
intention of producing even a rhizopod or an amœba. The explanation
of this mimicry of purpose lies in the fact of the mutual
interdependence of the parts: no change can take place in one organ of
society or of the animal without being transmitted through the whole,
just as you cannot remove one of the undermost of a cartload of bricks
without more or less disturbing all the rest. But what is true of the
bricks or of the units of the animal organism is true of the units of
the social organism: what we discover in their action and reaction on
one another is the operation, not of voluntary purpose, but of
invariable laws of cause and effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account