At most, the theory of organic evolution can make out that there is a tendency towards the identification of the interests of the individual with those of society. It cannot demonstrate a complete identification. The community has indeed been called an organism, and the individual spoken of as a cell in the tissue of which it is composed; but we must avoid pressing this analogy to the point of breaking. Among so many points of similarity between society and an individual organism, there is one essential distinction,--the social organism has no feelings and thoughts but those of its individual members--the conscious centre is in the unit, not in the whole; whereas, when we regard the individual organism and its constituent members, consciousness is seen to exist only in the whole, not in each several unit. The absence of a "social sensorium"[120] should, therefore, make us hesitate to identify the ends of individual with those of collective action. Every cell in the individual body has a life-history of its own, besides partaking of the life of the organism; and, did it possess the reason which "looks before and after," it might probably adopt an egoistic attitude, and object to the subordination of its private interests to the good of the whole. In the same way, the many individual lives which make up the social organism--since each of them possesses a separate consciousness--are apt to disregard the life of the larger whole whose members they are. Now what the theory of utilitarianism requires is, that the happiness or pleasurable consciousness of the community or of the race, not that of the individual, be made the end; and those who make egoism the end of ethics, commonly maintain that the general happiness is the end of politics.[121] The individual is not indeed required to be entirely unselfish or "altruistic" in action. He is not altogether forbidden to seek his own things, nor enjoined to seek only the things of others; and evolutionist utilitarianism, indeed, would tell him to seek his own happiness in the happiness of the community. But the obvious remark must be borne in mind, that society, the social organism, cannot experience happiness. However it may resemble the individual organism in the manner of its growth, the modes of its activity, and even its relation to its component members, yet it cannot feel pleasure or pain as an individual does. The "happiness of the community" does not mean the happiness of the social organism, but is only a concise formula for the aggregate happinesses of the individuals composing it. [Sidenote: in respect of feeling.]