Part 14

It is worthy of note that, while Spencer finds the parallelisms to increase in significance the more they are examined, the differences tend to break down when they are worked out in detail.

The advantage which Spencer had over Plato and Hobbes is very clearly seen in the first and fourth parallelisms, neither of which could have been made until twenty-one years before, when in 1839, Theodore Schwann developed his great theory that the body is an organized society of interconnected cells. “The importance of this theory,” says Professor Thatcher, “can hardly be estimated. It gave an entirely new view to animal and vegetable life.” At any rate, it served Spencer greatly in this essay.

The next ten pages are devoted to organic development from the protozoa, the lowest tiny animal forms, to crustacea--crabs etc.,--which are materially higher in the animal scale. This development is marked by increasing mutual dependence of parts and a growing division of labor. It is compared to the development of society from primitive Bushmen to the early Anglo-Saxons, during which corresponding phenomena are traced.

He escapes Haeckel’s blunder at least to the extent of calling the two divisions of labor by their proper names. Among animals it is the “physiological” division of labor; in society, the “economical” division of labor. Whether he would have been able to still perceive that distinction in dealing with those ant and bee communities where Haeckel got lost, there is nothing to show.

Spencer’s middle-class predilections come out strongly, and a very pretty physiological justification is provided for that wholly admirable section of the community.

The first step in the development of an embryo is its division into two main layers of cells--the mucous layer and the serous layer. The mucous layer, that fine inside skin of the body so to speak, absorbs nutriment. But that nutriment must be transferred to the serous layer which builds up the nerves and muscles. Presently there arises between these two a third--the vascular layer. Out of this third layer the chief blood vessels are developed and these vessels serve to transport the nutriment from the inner or mucous layer, which gathers it, to the outer or serous layer, which uses it for the whole organization’s upbuilding.

“Well,” says Spencer, “may we not trace a parallel step in social progress? Between the governing and the governed, there at first exists no intermediate class; and even in some societies that have reached considerable size, there are scarcely any but the nobles and their kindred on the one hand, and their serfs on the other; the social structure being such that transfer of commodities takes place directly from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher type, there grows up, between these two primitive classes, another--the trading or middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that, speaking generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle layer in the embryo.”

It is a pity to disturb this serene complacency, by pointing out that the real transporters of commodities are not the members of the middle class who, as a rule, do little and live well, but that section of the working class which mans freight trains, drives teams and shoves trucks. As for that “higher” class of cells which receives these commodities and consumes them while usefully engaged in building up the nervous and muscular system; such comparison could only apply to society’s brain workers, and it contains no justification for the useless parasitic type represented by such charming persons as Harry Thaw and Reggie Vanderbilt.

Another very interesting point is Spencer’s physiological vindication of profit. The limbs, glands, or other members of an animal are developed by exercise. But in order “that any organ in a living being may grow by exercise, there needs to be a due supply of blood.” All action implies waste; blood brings the materials for repair; and before there can be growth, the quantity of blood supplied must be more than is requisite for repair.

“In a society it is the same. If to some district which elaborates for the community particular commodities--say the woolens of Yorkshire--there comes an augmented demand; and if in fulfillment of this demand, a certain expenditure and wear and tear of the manufacturing organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the extra quantity of woolens sent away there comes back only such quantity of commodities as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of life and machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be growth, the commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient for these ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the growth be rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs we call profit, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a living body.”

This is “physiological” political economy with a vengeance and shows to what straits bourgeois apologists are reduced to find a justification of that exploitation of labor which is the only source of profit. In concluding this point Spencer seems to satirize his own position and at the same time gives something that looks very much like a socialist explanation of panics. He says: “And if in the body politic some part has been stimulated into great productivity, and afterwards can not get paid for all its produce, certain of its members become bankrupt, and it decreases in size.”

The truth of the whole matter is that Spencer is wholly at sea the moment he touches political economy, and in place of some elementary knowledge on that subject, we have the obsolete theories of the Manchester School proclaimed in the name of physiology.

Then follows a series of very ingenious comparisons. Following Liebig, he compares coins to blood corpuscles calling the later blood-discs to enhance the analogy and concludes: “throughout extensive divisions of the lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in societies of low civilization, there is no money.”

Then the development of blood vessels in lower animals is compared to the development of roads in primitive societies; their greater perfection in higher animals comparing with the railroads which more effectively convey food stuffs to the centers of population. Amid much that is fantastic and tedious, he says: “And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite directions as do the arteries and veins of a well-developed animal.”

“We come at length,” says Spencer, “to the nervous system.” This is by far the most interesting item in Spencer’s catalogue, because it is here that the evolutionary philosopher and the Manchester School politician come into open contradiction.

“We have now to compare the appliances by which a society as a whole, is regulated, with those by which the movements of an individual creature are regulated.”

Beginning with the nervous systems of lower animals he discovers their inferiority to lie in the absence of a controlling center. The lower Annulosa is composed of a series of ring-like segments. Each ring has its own nerve ganglia linked by connecting nerves, but “very incompletely dependent on any general controlling power. Hence it results that when the body is cut in two, the hinder part continues to move forward under the propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when the chain of ganglia has been divided without severing the body, the hind limbs may be seen trying to propel the body in one direction, while the fore limbs are trying to propel it in another.”

As we move up in the animal world the nervous system culminates in a centralized brain, and similarly as society becomes more complex, government appears.

And now the great apostle of the non-interference of government with the life of society is driven into the glaring contradiction of contending that the highest animal organization is that in which the brain, which he compares to government in society, interferes and controls most effectively.

“Strange as the assertion will be thought,” he says, “our Houses of Parliament discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in sundry respects comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal.” Strange indeed! Especially to Mr. Spencer’s disciples.

Then Mr. Spencer discovers that the kind of brain activity displayed by the highest animals best compares with that form of government called “representative.”

He says: “It is the nature of those great and latest-developed ganglia which distinguish the higher animals, to interpret and combine the multiplied and varied impressions conveyed to them from all parts of the system, and to regulate the actions in such a way as duly to regard them all; so it is in the nature of those great and latest-developed legislative bodies which distinguish the most advanced societies, to interpret and combine the wishes of all classes and localities and to make laws in harmony with the general wants.”

It would seem from this that, a society whose government represents only the interests of a handful of the community while the great majority are uncared for, is suffering from social paralysis.

Before we pass to the next chapter where we shall examine the position presented in “The Man Versus The State” we will observe one break in Spencer’s analogy which he fails to notice.

When the brain of an animal is wrecked the animal dies; it has no choice. But when the brain of a society fails to represent the interests of the mass of the people who compose that society, or when the social brain runs amuck and invites disaster, society may take its choice, it may elect to die or--it may get a new brain.

IX.

SPENCER’S INDIVIDUALISM.

Individualism is dead.