reflection that in
social organisms sentience is not localized as it is in biological
organisms. This is, in fact, the cardinal difference between the two.
There is no _social sensorium_.

In the one (the individual), consciousness is concentrated in a
small part of the aggregate. In the other (society), it is
diffused throughout the aggregate: all the units possess the
capacities for happiness and misery, if not in equal degrees,
still in degrees that approximate. As then, there is no social
sensorium, the welfare of the aggregate, considered apart from
that of the units, is not an end to be sought. The society
exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the
benefit of the society.[31]

The point is that society, _as distinct from the individuals_ who
compose it, has no apparatus for feeling pain or pleasure. There are no
_social_ sensations. Perceptions and mental imagery are individual and
not social phenomena. Society lives, so to speak, only in its separate
organs or members, and each of these organs has its own brain and organ
of control which gives it, among other things, the power of independent
locomotion. This is what is meant when society is described as a
collectivity.

VI. SOCIAL CONTROL AND SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

The fundamental problem which Spencer's paradox raises is that of social
control. How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in
a corporate and consistent way? How in the case of specific types of
social group, for example an animal herd, a boys' gang, or a political
party, does the group control its individual members; the whole dominate
the parts? What are the specific _sociological_ differences between
plant and animal communities and human society? What kind of differences
are _sociological differences_, and what do we mean in general by the
expression "sociological" anyway?

Since Spencer's essay on the social organism was published in 1860,[32]
this problem and these questions, in one form or another, have largely
absorbed the theoretical interest of students of society. The attempts
to answer them may be said to have created the existing schools into
which sociologists are divided.

A certain school of writers, among them Paul Lilienfeld, Auguste
Schaeffle, and Rene Worms, have sought to maintain, to extend, or modify
the biological analogy first advanced by Spencer. In doing so they have
succeeded sometimes