[This leads to a criticism of Mr. Spencer’s elaborate comparison of the body politic to the body physical, a comparison vitiated by the fact that “among the higher physiological organisms there is none which is developed by the conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into a complete whole.”]

The process of social organisation appears to be comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are gradually built up into complex aggregations—­in which each element retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to the whole.

[It is permissible to quote a few more sentences from this address for the sake of their freshness, or as illustrating the writer’s ideas.

Discussing toleration,] “I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues.” [(This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism.)

Of Mr. Spencer’s comparison of the State to a living body in the interests of individualism:—­]

I suppose it is universally agreed that it would be useless and absurd for the State to attempt to promote friendship and sympathy between man and man directly.  But I see no reason why, if it be otherwise expedient, the State may not do something towards that end indirectly.  For example, I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community.  A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men’s minds of an ideal of true, just, and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment’s rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business should have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and charity.  Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it.

The sole order of nobility which, in my judgment, becomes a philosopher, is the rank which he holds in the estimation of his fellow-workers, who are the only competent judges in such matters.  Newton and Cuvier lowered themselves when the one accepted an idle knighthood, and the other became a baron of the empire.  The great men who went to their graves as Michael Faraday and George Grote seem to me to have understood the dignity of knowledge better when they declined all such meretricious trappings. [(On the other hand, he thought it right and proper for officials, in scientific as in other departments, to accept such honours, as giving them official power and status.  In his own case, while refusing all simple titular honours, he accepted the Privy Councillorship, because, though incidentally carrying a title, it was an office; and an office in virtue of which a man of science might, in theory at least, be called upon to act as responsible adviser to the Government, should special occasion arise.)