Revival: A Philosophy of Social Progress (1920)

2nd Edition

Edward Johns Urwick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351348898
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

This book was originally written with a double purpose; The first reason was to introduce students to a conception of a social philosophy which should be definitely linked to modern sociology, and not to be treated as a mere outgrowthof the older physical philosophy. The second reason, was to establish a new position in regard to the philosophical conception of social change – a position in opposition to that usually assumed both by the sociologist and by the philosopher.

CHAPTER III

SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS SUBJECT TO THE FORCES AND LAWS OF ORGANIC LIFE

SOCIETY lives; social phenomena are phenomena of life. What have the laws of life to teach us about them?

In explaining the life of anything there are always three sets of facts or laws to be taken into account: the facts of organic structure; the facts of organic growth; and the facts of organic evolution.

The facts of organic structure may be expressed in this way: Everything that lives has some sort of structure which is what it is because of the function, or work, or purpose for which it exists. This is best expressed by likening it to a machine or tool (an “organon”) which is what it is by reason of the work it has to do. And all the parts of a machine—its structure, in other words—have a meaning, or are to be explained only by reference to this work or function. The word “organic” therefore implies, at any rate, this: the possession of structure or definite arrangement of parts, dependent upon function, and deriving its meaning from its purpose or function. And an organism is a living structure whose meaning or significance depends upon its functions. The structure is composed of parts, called separate organs, each with a function also; and the parts are composed of cells, each of which, again, has a function to perform. These cells are the ultimate component elements of the organism—so far, at least, as we need analyse it here.

This possession of structure, consisting of organs composed of groups of cells, all related to the vital purposes, is the first fact of importance to be noted. It may be added that increased complexity of structure implies advance in organic life, for the simple reason that increased differentiation of organs and parts implies more numerous functions and purposes, and therefore more manifold activities on the part of the organism, as well as greater adaptation to different kinds of work.

It is clear that the facts of society correspond to a great extent to the facts of an organism. Its structure, and the relation of that structure to function, are both obvious. Every society possesses organs, which are what they are because of the work they have to do—a directing or governing part, for instance; a producing or food-obtaining part; a distributing or circulating part; a protecting part, and so on. It is clear, too, that the whole structure and its parts are made up of cells, though it is less clear how exactly we should define those cells. From the point of view of the organs and their functions, we must regard the individual citizens as the cells; but in relation to the general life and growth of society as a whole we would more properly call the family the cell. But the family is not the unit which is of importance in making up the different structures of society. For these individual men (and some women) are the important units or component cells; and the family may be regarded as a kind of enveloping cell-substance which exists in order to preserve and reproduce the functioning cells which are required to form the organs of the society.

Again, like every organism, the “social organism” as a whole may be said to have a general vital function to which its entire structure is related. The general function or purpose of every organism is the satisfactory preservation of the life of the organism under the conditions which nature happens to have imposed. So with society. Whatever else we may have to say about the ends for which society exists, this, at least, is true, that its most obvious and necessary function is to keep itself alive, in a satisfactory way, in the circumstances in which it happens to find itself.

And, lastly, the dependence of structure upon function, and the interdependence of all the parts and functions upon one another, are organic characteristics which may certainly be predicated of society. All the organs are what they are and perform the functions which they perform and continue to be so and do so because of their connexion with the whole organism and its vital function and with one another; and the same may be said of the cells, in part, at least. And this interdependence is perhaps the most significant fact which the “organic analogy” emphasizes for us. Social life from beginning to end presents, at least, this characteristic of an organism, and we rightly use the terms which imply organic nature—such as structure, organs, tissue. For every bit of it is incessantly reacting upon every other bit; nothing can be dealt with separately; no part can exist without modifying the condition of every other part. This is so obvious and so much a truism that we need continually to be reminded that it is also true. If the slum is neglected it cannot possibly be well with Mayfair or Suburbia. If Mayfair is extravagant or luxurious then the poor must suffer. If religion is neglected, not only morality but business enterprise and physical fitness will be affected somehow. If neighbours are neglected the relations of employer to employee, of friend to friend, of brother to sister, will be altered for the worse. The effects may be slow and obscure and unexpected, but the effects are as certain and inevitable as are the similar results which flow from the organic connexions within our physical bodies. Society is not one, as Plato would have made it, in such a way that every injury to any insignificant part of it is felt at once through all the parts. But society is one, if not in feeling, at any rate in fact; and probably humanity also, so far as its different groups and members are socially related at all. For every social relation is an “organic” relation in this sense, that it involves the necessary organic reactions indicated by the word “interdependence” All our treatment of the natives of India or of Africa, all the actions we perform or countenance, all the omissions for which we are responsible, throw their effects back through the whole tissue of our social life, insensibly perhaps, but surely.

So far we find that the analogy holds good, and suggests numerous considerations which it is well that the social philosopher should take into account. But the analogy (even when we confine our view to social structure and function) cannot be stretched far; society resembles an organism in many characteristics, but the points of difference are more numerous and more important than the points of resemblance. One or two obvious differences may be noted here; the most important of all will be dealt with later. In the first place, the cells out of which the organs of society are built up are never wholly fixed or specialized as a component part of a single organ. Every normal individual is a component part of many organs. A bishop is not merely a Church functionary, a soldier does not exist solely to fight, and most workmen do many other things besides their day’s work. And, as we shall notice later, these other things are of more importance in giving significance to the cell than its ostensible social function.

Similarly, all the organs or structural parts of society are plastic and even interchangeable in ways unknown among organisms. A sect or a Church or a group of traders may become an army of fighters; while an army may be dissolved at a moment’s notice, and convert itself into a body of peaceable farmers or tradesmen. In no organism, even of the lowest type, do we find any phenomenon really resembling the turning of swords into pruning-hooks.

Again, society has no organs whatever for certain important functions, such as feeling and thinking. Does that merely mean that it is so low in the scale of organic life that it neither feels nor thinks, and so requires neither a sensorium nor a brain ? As will appear later, the difficulty cannot be resolved so easily; social feeling is a reality, though no organ exists for it.

We pass on to the second set of facts which must be considered: the facts of organic growth and change. These may be stated, for our purpose, in this way: First, that change is always going on in every part of the organism; secondly, that the changes are all determined from within—by the life-characteristics of the organism and its special needs, as well as by the environment in which it lives; and thirdly, that all the changes which belong to organic growth and change follow invariably a definite cycle of development, maturity, decay and death.

Of these facts, the first undoubtedly finds illustration in the life of every society. It is of the utmost importance to realize that no single institution, no relationship, no social habit or custom or attitude or view, no belief or creed or conception, is ever stationary, ever the same two days running. The Church of to-day is never the Church of yesterday; our constitution and laws are undergoing alteration even when Parliament is not sitting; the institution of private property is changing little by little every day—and will so change, in spite of all the property defence leagues in the world; the full definition of the family which fits our family now will not fit it next year. It does not follow that all or any of these changes are “progressive”in the sense of being movements to some better state. It may be so; or the change may be only an advance in old-fogeyism, or a movement from greater to less usefulness, or from comparative stability to great instability.

But the second fact is not applicable to society. The determination of the incessant change of an organism from within, and not merely from without, is one of the very obvious characteristics of any living thing. That is to say, every organism begins as a group of fixed potentialities, which determine absolutely the lines of its developmental changes. An acorn must grow into an oak tree, and a baby into a human adult—if they grow at all; and from birth to death all the changes which belong to the organic life of each are determined in their kind by the fundamental oak-nature or human nature. Of society we cannot say this. We may, indeed, insist that all its changes are determined from within, by movements of feeling, impulse, and felt need; but there is no fixed group of nature-potentialities to which all the changes are relative, as is the case with every organism.

And thirdly, society has no predetermined cycle of change by which it is compelled to pass through the fixed stages of growth, maturity, old age, decay and death. It is one of the shallowest of social generalizations to predicate old age or decrepitude of any society Historians may speak figuratively of the decay and death of an empire—of the decline and fall of Rome or Babylon, of the possible decline of the British Empire. But the sociologist is forced to deny that societies have any term of life or vigour, or need ever die or decay. The life must be constantly renewed—and is so renewed indefinitely. But any society may live (with probable fluctuations of power and achievement) for any number of centuries; and any institution—such as a Church— may live on indefinitely too—changing incessantly in subtle ways, but without any break in the thread of its life.

When we turn to the third set of facts—the facts of organic evolution—we find that the analogy of society to an organism breaks down almost entirely. But, as we are now dealing with a thoroughly dangerous word, a preliminary explanation is necessary. Evolution may be taken in its literal meaning of “unrolling”or “unfolding”; and in this sense it may be applied to any living thing whatever, from a bud or a flower to society and its life. But organic evolution is now generally understood to imply a definite process by which types and species of living organisms and their organs are evolved; and unfortunately it is in this sense that the word is often applied to society and social institutions. Now the facts of organic evolution of this kind are as follows: First, that the organisms multiply their kind and die and are succeeded by descendants—of the same type, but slightly differing from the parents; secondly, that between organisms and types of organisms there is a constant struggle to survive, or competition for the means of subsistence; thirdly, that the individuals and types best fitted for the existing environment tend to survive, and so the variation of type best fitted for survival does actually tend to endure. And these facts form the basis of what are known as the laws of heredity, variation of type, natural selection, and survival of the fittest.

Now none of these facts or laws can be applied to society and its institutions except in a very figurative, and peculiar way. The succession of individuals, one generation constantly taking the place of its predecessor, is a necessary condition of heredity and variation. But societies do not die and leave offspring to succeed them; institutions—such as Churches, armies, or legal systems—do not produce other institutions to continue their kind. Variation, it is true, is always taking place; but it is not this sort of variation. There is no break in the life-thread; the incessant change which we have asserted of everything social is accompanied by indefinite continuity of the life of the society or the institution. It is true, also, that we apply the conception of heredity to social life, speaking of the heritage of each age, or of our social inheritance. But the use of the word is wholly figurative; the Church of to-day inherits what the Church of yesterday has handed down to it, very much in the sense in which a man of fifty inherits what his youth has bequeathed to him.

The conceptions of struggle, selection, and survival are similarly inapplicable. There is struggle between societies and between institutions and types of organs within them; there is also selection and survival of types. But again, it is not at all the struggle, selection, or survival which organic evolution requires. We speak, for example, of the competition and struggle between our industrial system and that of Germany; but the process and result are both peculiar, consisting in a constant series of reactions of one system upon the other, leading—not to the disappearance of one and the survival of the other—but to endless modifications of both by means of imitation of method and purposed changes of organization and device.

The facts which we have been considering, of organic structure, growth and change, and evolution, do, of course, apply to the individual units—the human beings —of whom society is built up. For we, the units, are living organisms, and therefore subject to all the laws of organic life. But it is important to note here that, since we are also human, social, spiritual beings, the laws of organic life work upon us subject to all the controls imposed by the conditions of these other sides of our nature; and the effect of their working—which is, of course, never absent—is merged in a very complicated sum of effects which, as a whole, is very different from the effects found among all other organisms. Thus, the forces of heredity and the natural agents of selection (such as disease and war) are always at work among us exactly as among all existing living things. But we may combine the forces of heredity with the forces of our aims and purposes in such a way as to produce types which nature would never have produced, or to give a very long lease of life to other types which nature would have killed off long ago. And in the same way we may, and certainly do, complicate the effects of natural selection and survival by the interaction of what we may call, according to our prejudice, the vice of humanitarian sentimentality or the virtue of humane sympathy; and the total result is something very different from what would have appeared if the forces of nature and organic life had been left to work alone. But however far this process of our meddling may go, it does not in the least alter the fact that, throughout our individual lives, and throughout the life of the race or the species, the laws of the organism apply every whit as much as to any other section of the organic universe. The biologist or the biological sociologist is only wrong when he finds fault with our meddling, and asks us either to allow the natural forces to produce their natural effects without the distortions due to our designs, or else to combine with them only the forces (the purposes and aims) which he thinks good. For then he passes beyond his province; the social aims are not more his business than the business of any other citizen. As well might he exhort an Indian fakir, who insists upon holding his arms straight out for an indefinite time, to allow the forces of gravitation to have their natural effect in drawing them down to his side again—as would happen with any ordinary mortal. If the fakir chooses to combine with gravity the force of his own will and purpose, and so produce a very unusual result, what is that to do with the man of science ? And if the latter urges that the result will be deleterious and will probably cause atrophy of the muscles (and he very properly might urge this), even so his argument is not in the least conclusive. The fakir has another aim than physical fitness; if atrophy is the price he has to pay for the attainment of this aim, well and good. The man of science may call him an outrageous fool; but his arguments are not pertinent. And in something of the same way (though the analogy is an extreme one) the biologist may call society foolish or mad for aiming at results very different from those which nature tends to bring about unaided or unhindered. He may rightly warn society of this or that atrophy or other consequence, and the social units must take heed to the warning. But the argument is not conclusive; if we still insist upon giving play to our sympathy or sentiment, in accordance with some aim of our own, that is an end of the matter. We may be extraordinarily foolish, like the fakir, in the eyes of the man of science. But only the far-off result can prove that.

One or two points suggested in the foregoing discussion call for fuller consideration. We noticed that the units or cells of society could not be regarded as really analogous to the cells of an organism, by reason of the fact that they are not specialized and fixed in relation to a particular organ or the performance of a particular set of functions; and that the organs are also peculiar in consequence of their plasticity or power of changing their work or function. The cells do all manner of things in the course of a single day, and in connexion with other organs; their individual activities are far more numerous than those involved in their one defined function; no one is entirely a component part of a single organ, absorbed in its work, as are the specialized cells of an organism, such as the nerve cells, bone cells, hair cells, and so on. Each social unit may have one chief function—from which his usual description is derived—as workman, policeman, postman, or member of Parliament. But this by no means exhausts his meaning; and—a much more serious matter—is often far from indicating the most important part of his social significance. Similarly every organ performs many functions, or at least has many activities; though, again, each has some chief function from which it derives its name, as a factory, or an army, or a prison system. But in this case, also, the real social significance of the organ goes beyond this—beyond, indeed, any possible definition of its functions and activities.

Now the functions and activities of an organ or cell of our physical bodies are doubtless often more diverse than we know, and our definitions of them are far from complete. This is probably true of all living matter. We can define accurately and completely the function of a watch or a hammer—as such. But we have probably not got to the bottom of the activities of the heart or the phagocyte cells or any other part of our organic bodies. We know and define each by reference to some functions only; but then we know in these cases that the activities which we have discovered and included in our definition are the important and significant ones in relation to the structure and the growth and welfare of the organism, as it interests us. The heart is the organ which pumps the blood, and the phagocyte cells are the blood’s scavengers; and that is what we chiefly want to know about them. It is possible that every cell has a life of its own with far more complex and interesting activities; it may conceivably have its loves and hates, its feelings and prejudices, very much as every human social unit has. But these do not appear to matter in relation to our bodies; they produce no serious changes in our health or physical condition. A disappointment in love or a change of creed on the part of any or every phagocyte cell in my body does not make me feverish or alter my organic structure and functioning. So long as they do their scavenging work, I need not care what they feel or think. But in the case of the organs and cells of the human society, it is just these undefined, obscure, internal activities which are important and significant in relation to all social changes—in relation to all that we call progress. We classify individuals and define institutions in accordance with some observed functions which they undoubtedly perform; but the elements which really matter the most are found to elude our categories.

One or ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Note to the Second Edition
• Table of Contents
• I Social Life and its Problems: The Reformer’s Interest and the Social Philosopher’s Interest. The Social Philosopher’s Position Explained
• II Society Considered as Subject to the Forces and Laws of the Physical World
• III Society Considered as Subject to the Forces and Laws of Organic Life
• IV Society Considered as Subject to the Laws of Mind
• V Society Considered as Subject to the Laws of Mind (continued)
• VI Society Considered as an Ethical Structure: A Unity Dependent Upon Purpose
• VII The Implications of Citizenship, and the Rights and Duties of the Citizen
• VIII The Spiritual Element in Social Progress, and the Nature of the True Individual
• IX The Real Purpose of the Social Process; and the Tests of the Reformer’s Aims and Methods
• X The Final Criteria of Social Progress
• Bibliography
• Index