But there are ways in which society and an organism are unlike.[XVI-6] These were analyzed by Spencer and determined to be merely superficial differences. There are four of these main differences. (1) Unlike organisms, societies have no specific extensive form, such as a physical body with limbs or a face. (2) The elements of society do not form a continuous whole as in the case of an animal. The living units composing society are free, and not in contact, being more or less dispersed. (3) The parts of society are not stationary and fixed in their positions relative to the whole. (4) In an organism consciousness is concentrated in a small part of the aggregate, while in society consciousness is diffused. The alleged superficiality in this difference between society and an organism was difficult for Spencer to maintain.
In discussing the organic analogy further, Spencer compared the alimentary system of an organism to the productive industries, or the sustaining system in the body politic.[XVI-7] Furthermore, there is a strong parallelism between the circulatory system of an organism and the distributing system in society with its transportation lines; but more particularly, its commercial classes and media of exchange. Then, in both cases there has developed regulating systems. In an organism there is a dominant center and subordinate centers, the senses, and a neural apparatus. A similar structure appears in society in the form of an adjustive apparatus, or government, for the purpose of adjudicating the differences between the producers and the consumers. These parallelisms throw only a small measure of light upon the nature of society. They appear ridiculous when carried to an extreme, for example, to the extreme to which Spencer himself went when he compared the King’s Council to the medulla oblongata, the House of Lords to the cerebellum, and the House of Commons to the cerebrum.
Spencer uses his analogies very extensively and vigorously, and later refers to them as merely a scaffolding for building a structure of deductions. This conclusion contains contradictory elements. When the scaffolding is removed, society is left standing as a more or less intangible affair. If a society is like an organism, it experiences a natural cycle of birth, maturity, old age, and death. But according to the telic concept of progress that was advanced by Lester F. Ward and developed by later writers, the death of society does not come with organic inevitableness, but depends on the vision, plans, courage, and activities of that society’s members. A society need never die.
For many years it has been popular to criticise Spencer. Nearly all the criticisms are justified. Moreover, they have been so numerous that little of worth seems to be left in Spencer’s writings. However, Spencer’s contributions to social thought are not negligible for several reasons. (1) He emphasized the laws of evolution and natural causation. (2) He described social evolution as a phase of natural evolution. (3) He pointed out the likenesses between biological organisms and human society. (4) He made the rôle of social structures, or institutions, to stand out distinctly. (5) He stressed the importance of individuality. (6) He undermined the idea that the State is a master machine to which all the individual citizens must submit automatically.
In the United States, Spencer possessed an able and loyal friend in John Fiske (1842–1901). Fiske built his social thought upon the evolutionarily formulae of Darwin and Spencer. In his Cosmic Philosophy, or philosophy of the universe, Fiske contended that the evolution of man produced fundamental changes in the nature of cosmic evolution. With the development of man there appears a new force in the universe, the human spirit, or soul. The advent of this psychical entity has produced a subordination of the purely bodily, physical, material forces and established a control by spiritual forces. Moreover, in human evolution there has been a slowly increasing subordination of the selfish phases of spiritual life to the altruistic. With the apparent cessation in important bodily changes there have come unheralded and unanticipated psychical inventions, which have released man from the passive adaptation to environment which animals manifest, and given to him an increasingly positive control over the processes of adaptation. Humanity as the highest product of the evolutionary processes has the power to change the whole course of cosmic development. Fiske distinctly emphasized the psychical forces in evolution and the part which they are playing in making mankind purposeful and in organizing groups on social principles. Humanity is not a mere incident in evolution; it is the supreme factor.[XVI-9] The main purpose of man is not the perpetuation of the species, but the development of increasingly higher and more social purposes.
Following the ideas of Maine, Tylor, McLennan, and Lubbock, Fiske concluded that social evolution originated when families, “temporarily organized among all the higher gregarious mammals, became in the case of the highest mammal permanently organized.”[XVI-10] Gregariousness developed into definite family relationships and responsibilities. Social evolution produced an increased complexity and specialty in intelligence, which in turn required a lengthening of the period “during which the nervous connections involved in ordinary adjustments are becoming organized.” Such a transformation requires time, and hence the need for a period of infancy which is not common to the lower animals. Accompanying this period of infancy, there is the development of strong affection of relatively short duration among higher animals. Among mankind parental love takes on the characteristics not only of intensity and unselfishness but of duration and forgiveness. In this phase of evolution there is a correlative development of three factors, namely, the prolongation of infancy, the rise of parental affection, and increasing intelligence. The gradual prolongation of the period of infancy is partly a consequence of increasing intelligence, and in turn the prolongation of infancy affords the circumstances for the establishment of permanent relationships, of reciprocal behavior, of sociality.
Fiske was one of the first social philosophers to point out the significance of foresight as a phase of evolutionary development. Perhaps the chief way in which civilized man is distinguished from the barbarian is in his ability “to adapt his conduct to future events, whether contingent or certain to occur.” Civilized man has the power to forego present enjoyment in order to safeguard himself against future disaster.[XVI-12] This quality is the essence of prudence and is due in large part to civilized man’s superior power of self-restraint, one of the chief elements in moral progress. It is equally important as “an indispensable prerequisite to the accumulation of wealth in any community.” It is the basic factor in civilized man’s elaborate scientific provisions and in his numerous far-reaching philosophic and religious systems.
Paul von Lilienfeld (1829–1903) made the organic analogy a definite part of his theory of society. He compared the individual to the cells in an organism; the governmental and industrial organizations, to the neural system; and the cultural products of society, to the intercellular parts of an organism.[XVI-13]
Lilienfeld compared the stages of growth of the individual to the stages of racial development, namely, savage, barbarian, and civilized. This analogy was made use of by Fiske. Although somewhat true in a very general sense, this recapitulation theory cannot be carried into minute details.
The concept of social capitalization was originated by Lilienfeld. By it he meant the ability of society to store up useful ideas and methods and transmit them from generation to generation. In this way each generation becomes the inheritor of all the human experiences that have gone before.