going and consistent of the champions of
astynomocracy, has devoted a very able and ingenious essay[1] to the
drawing out of a comparison between the process by which men have
advanced from the savage state to the highest civilization, and that
by which an animal passes from the condition of an almost shapeless
and structureless germ, to that in which it exhibits a highly
complicated structure and a corresponding diversity of powers. Mr.
Spencer says with great justice--

[Footnote 1: "The Social Organism:" Essays. Second Series.]

"That they gradually increase in mass; that they become,
little by little, more complex; that, at the same time, their
parts grow more mutually dependent; and that they continue to
live and grow as wholes, while successive generations of their
units appear and disappear,--are broad peculiarities which
bodies politic display, in common with all living bodies, and
in which they and living bodies differ from everything else."

In a very striking passage of this essay Mr. Spencer shows with what
singular closeness a parallel between the development of a nervous
system, which is the governing power of the body in the series of
animal organisms, and that of government, in the series of social
organisms, can be drawn:--

"Strange as the assertion, will be thought," says Mr. Spencer,
"our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy
functions that are, in sundry respects, comparable to those
discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal....
The cerebrum co-ordinates the countless heterogeneous
considerations which affect the present and future welfare of
the individual as a whole; and the Legislature co-ordinates
the countless heterogeneous considerations which affect the
immediate and remote welfare of the whole community. We may
describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral, social; and
a good brain is one in which the desires answering to their
respective interests are so balanced, that the conduct they
jointly dictate sacrifice none of them. Similarly we may
describe the office of Parliament as that of _averaging_ the
interests of the various classes in a community; and a good
Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
respective interests are so balanced, that their united
legislation concede