While it is well to keep these rules in mind, it must be conceded that their critical application is somewhat limited when we come to Spencer’s famous analogy between animal organisms and human societies. The “synthetic” philosopher was much Haeckel’s superior in sociology, and he possessed an immense fund of biological lore that was unavailable to Comte writing a quarter of a century earlier. Thus Spencer seems to recognize that his essay on “The Social Organism” is largely an ingenious analogy, from which conclusions must be drawn with caution. Not that bourgeois scientists have always exhibited a very scientific temper in this regard. On the contrary they have, on every possible occasion, proclaimed that certain alleged truths in physics or biology were in irreconcilable contradiction to certain Socialist conclusions in sociology. But we may find a key to Spencer’s chariness in the matter of drawing conclusions in the rather surprising fact, which will appear presently, that the one legitimate conclusion which the analogy will thoroughly sustain, is an exact contradiction to all that Spencer had ever proclaimed on social questions. The essay itself, like a great deal of Spencer’s writing, is prolix and wearisome, so we shall select only his most important and striking comparisons. The introduction is excellent and has for its text Sir James Mackintosh’s great saying--great in his non-evolutionary age though very common-place today--“Constitutions are not made, but grow.” He then declares “the central idea of Plato’s model republic” to be “the correspondence between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind.” Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, comes next with his celebrated “Leviathan.” Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite parallelism; not, however between a society and the mind, but between a society and the human body. Hobbes’ “Leviathan” was the Commonwealth and he “carries this comparison so far as to actually give a drawing of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are made up of multitudes of men.” Spencer criticizes these analogies of Plato and Hobbes in detail, but finds the chief error of both writers to consist in the assumption by both “that the organization of a society is comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general, but to the organization of a human body in particular. There is no warrant whatever for assuming this. It is in no way implied by the evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find mixed up with the truths of early speculation.” But, insists Spencer: “The untenableness of the particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying an essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague adumbrations of the truth.”