the attempt to apply exact methods to the
explanation of historical facts. In the attempt to achieve this,
however, it has become something quite different from history. It has
become like psychology with which it is most intimately related, a
natural and relatively abstract science, and auxiliary to the study of
history, but not a substitute for it. The whole matter may be summed up
in this general statement: history interprets, natural science explains.
It is upon the interpretation of the facts of experience that we
formulate our creeds and found our faiths. Our explanations of
phenomena, on the other hand, are the basis for technique and practical
devices for controlling nature and human nature, man and the physical
world.

V. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM: HUMANITY OR LEVIATHAN?

After Comte the first great name in the history of sociology is Spencer.
It is evident in comparing the writings of these two men that, in
crossing the English Channel, sociology has suffered a sea change. In
spite of certain similarities in their points of view there are profound
and interesting differences. These differences exhibit themselves in the
different ways in which they use the term "social organism."

Comte calls society a "collective organism" and insists, as Spencer
does, upon the difference between an organism like a family, which is
made up of independent individuals, and an organism like a plant or an
animal, which is a physiological unit in which the different organs are
neither free nor conscious. But Spencer, if he points out the
differences between the social and the biological organisms, is
interested in the analogy. Comte, on the other hand, while he recognizes
the analogy, feels it important to emphasize the distinctions.

Society for Comte is not, as Levy-Bruhl puts it, "a polyp." It has not
even the characteristics of an animal colony in which the individuals
are physically bound together, though physiologically independent. On
the contrary, "this 'immense organism' is especially distinguished from
other beings in that it is made up of separable elements of which each
one can feel its own co-operation, can will it, or even withhold it, so
long as it remains a direct one."[25]

On the other hand, Comte, although he characterized the social
_consensus_ and solidarity as "collective," nevertheless thought of the
relations existing between human beings in society--in the family, for
example, which he regards as the unit