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[Chapter 7. Is Society an Organism?] 60. Ifwe define 'organism' from the idea ofcalling anything an organism, society must be conceived as organic. We must use this category in order to understand the facts. The reason for this will be seen in studying the two main facts in organism. One is the thought ofa unity or whole which gives meaning to the activity of all its points, and the other is that these parts are economical centers for maintaining, through continual reconstruction, the activity of the whole. 61. It is useless to discuss whether society is an organism or not until we have defined what [an] organism is, that is, on what ground we call anything an organism . What is involved in the concept of an organism is underlined in the two-fold fact above. The latter halfofthe above definition has two phases. A certain amount of diversity is included in the idea of an organism. There is the phase of: 1. Specialization; 2. Interdependence. 62. Three phases ofactivity are always going on in any organic life. 1. The activity which takes in, or nutritive activity. 2. The elaborative, or digesting. 3. The depurating process ofexcluding useless matter, and assimilating the useful. Specialization and interdependence are correlative, and cannot be separated. That is, the energy necessary to expel waste product has to be made good by the nutritive and elaborate processes. The first element in the definition makes the difference between organism and machine. The machine shows the specialization of interdependent parts, but the whole does not react in its constituent elements . Even in plants it is much less marked than in man. This is why society is a higher organism than the individual. It has a more definite value. It is involved in all this in that the unity is one of action and not one of existence or form. The latter is found in the inorganic as well as in organic. It is functional unity. Moreover, any particular thing is conceived of as a unity only when for the time being it is looked on as organic. 63. The various objections to the theory ofsociety as an organism may all be reduced to two general heads. First, the point by Spencer (Principles ofSociologyO ) that in biological organism the parts are all subservient to another part. The nervous system alone has final value, that is, has feeling. While society as a whole has no consciousness and the units have the feeling. That is, society has no social consciousness. (Vol. I, Part II, pp. 448-80.) Second, from the opposite school which objects that the concept oforganism is only biological and ultimately physical, while society is ethical and spiritual. That is, the concept of 143 144 Lectures on Political Ethics organism goes back like all natural concepts to the idea of force. The unity of society, involving will and personality, transcends the idea of force. (See also writings of F. M. Taylor ofMichigan University, M. T. Harris. Both have the idea of society as spiritua1.31 ) 64. There are two problems: l.IS society thoroughly organic, that is, has it sensori? 2. What is the relation of the biological phase of the organism to the ideal or spiritual? That is, what is the antithesis between force and will? Is will something that supervenes upon the organism, or is it the completest expression ofthe principle of organism? Has society a consciousness? Spencer attributes consciousness to the nervous system because it is the necessity [needed] to [have] sensations in any part ofthe body. But the real question is: How does the nervous system act in reference to species (parts)? But it is as foolish to say that consciousness is there as to say that the explosion lays [i.e., causes] the match because the powder does not explode until the match is applied. The nervous system is not different from other tissue, only differently differentiated. ...

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