+Herbert Spencer.+—­By a great many sociologists it is denied that man has his destiny in his own hands, or can by common effort modify the conditions of existence so as to promote progress.  The conception which is held to justify this view is that there is an exact correspondence between the progress of human society and the growth of an organism.  Foremost among those who take this view is Mr. Herbert Spencer.  The close analogy which the progress of the assumed social organism bears to the growth of the physiological organism is worked out in great detail throughout the “Synthetic Philosophy,” and is taken to establish “that Biology and Sociology will more or less interpret each other.”  The practical conclusion which is drawn is that the growth of society must not be interfered with; if the State goes beyond the duty of protection, it becomes an aggressor.  So Mr. Spencer is a most uncompromising opponent of State action, even education and public sanitation coming in for his condemnation.  Moreover, he holds that if the social organism be let alone it will tend to a future state of society in which social altruism will be so developed that the individual will voluntarily sacrifice himself in the interests of society.

In an essay on The Social Organism ("Essays,” Second Series), he writes:—­

Strange as the assertion will be thought, 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....  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 sacrifices 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 concedes to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest.

The error of regarding society merely as an aggregate is here clearly shown, for if the “parties” in Parliament were based on class delegation, as assumed, social progress would be blocked.  The only real foundation for the resemblance between society and an organism is this:  that unless the individual units composing society reduce themselves to unity of action in a definite direction, society as a whole cannot progress; or, in other words, that the principles of organization and leadership are essential to progress.  Yet Mr. Spencer denies that there is any sphere of collective action for the operation of these principles!