subservient to the
corporate life.

Such, then, are the points of analogy and the points of difference. May
we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer
light the points of analogy? While comparison makes definite the obvious
contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism,
it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be
expected. The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts,
and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the
social organism which have to be stated with considerable
qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior classes
of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict
with the all-important analogies. Societies slowly augment in mass; they
progress in complexity of structure; at the same time their parts become
more mutually dependent; their living units are removed and replaced
without destroying their integrity; and the extents to which they
display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities.
These are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies. And
these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with
all other things, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such
distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half
of the organic kingdom from the other. The _principles_ of organization
are the same, and the differences are simply differences of application.

Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the
comparison of a society with a living body, let us look at them in
detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the
more closely it is examined.

* * * * *

The lowest animal and vegetal forms--_Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_--are
chiefly inhabitants of the water. They are minute bodies, most of which
are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are
extremely simple in structure, and some of them, as the _Rhizopods_,
almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the
spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves which may
either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or
may continue attached. By the repetition of this process of fission,
aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the
_Protophyta_ we have some classes, as the _Diatomaceae