the lowest animals do not increase to
anything like the sizes of the higher ones; and, similarly, we see that
aboriginal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. In
complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage
tribes, as a mammal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple
creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that mutilation or
subdivision causes but little inconvenience; but from complex
communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any
considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the
rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of
the aggregate, often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in
length the lives of the component units, very far less than in civilized
communities and superior animals; which outlive many generations of
their component units.

On the other hand, the leading differences between societies and
individual organisms are these:--

1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a
point of contrast which loses much of its importance, when we remember
that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions
of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite--definiteness
being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly
in part determined by surrounding physical circumstances, as the forms
of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe
it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from
the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject
during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of
societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be
a further point of community.

2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism
consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do
not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over
some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears
to be an absolute distinction, is one which yet to a great extent fades
when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the
animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more
nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than
might be supposed--types in which the living units essentially composing
the mass, are disper