Through a similar division of labor the work of the community is split into trades, corresponding to the tissues in the natural organism. As the cells in one tissue, so the men in one trade are incessantly occupied with the same work. Out of several trades are formed the social organs. A social organ consequently is a certain community or district performing a certain part of an industry. This has been called “territorial division of labor.” Several such communities make up an organ-system or an industry. A few such larger units merge into the single unit, the entire mass of human individuals as a whole.
The cells of the individuals in an organism are consequently at once building-material and builders, and in their latter capacity are endowed with wants and aspirations that with natural necessity force them to organization without conscious plan or purpose. Necessity is the teacher that tells them how to organize. Some speak of a social instinct that man does or should possess; but its existence has never been shown. On the contrary, it is only by those needs that can only be satisfied by a community that men are driven to unite socially. Similarly with the cells. Only by building up an organism are they able to satisfy their common wants. What society is to human individuals, the natural organism is to the cells. No trade or industry can be found in the state that does not serve to provide for some common want of the people, and no tissue nor organ exists in the natural organism but for satisfying collective needs of the cells. These collective needs are at the same time the higher needs of the individuals. The organism provides the power that the isolated individual does not possess. Organization allows that specializing of effort which so essentially contributes to the productivity of labor. The more limited the operations each individual has to perform, the more rapidly and perfectly are they done.
Although the cell lives in a world inaccessible to our immediate comprehension, we still possess means to ascertain that it has the same fundamental qualities as man. We observe manifestations of life in the cell corresponding to those of sensitivity, feeling and will-power in man. The cell’s comprehending faculty has been termed irritability and its power of action spontaneity. From certain physiological phenomena the conclusion has also been drawn that the cell likewise possesses memory.
CHAPTER X.
The Organic Relationship Between the Soul and the Cells.
Hitherto only little study has been given to the spiritual qualities of the cells, and such investigations must always meet with certain insurmountable difficulties. The reason is that we only judge others by ourselves and we are therefore unable to understand the spiritual life of any being that is not one of our kin.
If a being stands higher or lower than ourselves its spiritual experiences, if not entirely different from ours, are at least limited and modified by the being’s own power of comprehension. If, however, these beings show manifestations of life that we understand, we must conclude that their spiritual or mental life is correspondingly active.
Such a position we occupy with regard to the beings called cells. From the result of their activities we conclude that they, like men, are endowed with aspirations capable of the highest conceivable evolution. What economic necessities are to man, the arterial blood is to the cell. The blood is an artificial product which nature no more gives to the cell than it gives clothes, food, houses and the like to man. Nature provides the raw material and cell and man alike must learn how to adapt it for the necessities of life. This operation, however, involves great difficulties. All such artificial products stand in inverse proportion to the power of the individual. The more perfect they are the more impossible it is for the individual to produce them. Only as citizens in a community, that is, through organization, are the individuals able to produce such products as exceed their isolated forces.