h, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to
this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr.
Bain's book will be indispensable.

THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.

[_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for January,_ 1860.]

Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions
are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about
this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the
surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his
general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new
thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this
apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has,
shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray
of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star
in the surrounding darkness.

Such a conception could not, indeed, fail to be startling when let fall
in the midst of a system of thought to which it was utterly alien.
Universally in Macintosh's day, things were explained on the hypothesis
of manufacture, rather than that of growth; as indeed they are, by the
majority, in our own day. It was held that the planets were severally
projected round the Sun from the Creator's hand, with just the velocity
required to balance the Sun's attraction. The formation of the Earth,
the separation of sea from land, the production of animals, were
mechanical works from which God rested as a labourer rests. Man was
supposed to be moulded after a manner somewhat akin to that in which a
modeller makes a clay-figure. And of course, in harmony with such
ideas, societies were tacitly assumed to be arranged thus or thus by
direct interposition of Providence; or by the regulations of law-makers;
or by both.

Yet that societies are not artificially put together, is a truth so
manifest, that it seems wonderful men should ever have overlooked it.
Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the small value of historical
studies, as they have been commonly pursued. You need but to look at the
changes going on around, or observe social organization in its leading
traits, to see that these are neither supernatural, nor are determined
by the wills of individual men, as by implication the older historians
teach; but are consequent on general natural causes. The one case of the
division of labour suffices to prove this.