and animals—the latter feeding on the former; but we also see that the animal itself is only distinguished from the plant by the possession of certain faculties over and above those of organic or vegetable life-viz., the faculties of sensation and locomotion. Equally to the animal as to the plant are organs of nutrition and reproduction indispensable; and Cuvier's notion of an animal being able to live for a moment by its animal life alone betrays a profound misconception of the nature of life. As it is the vegetables which supply animals with food, so in animals it is the vegetative life which supports the relative life.

"Physiologists have not sufficiently borne in mind that, although in man the animal life has a predominance over the vegetable life, nevertheless it is only superposed on the vegetative, and can never for an instant be independent of it. Nature presents to us a marvellous procession from the plant, which has only organic life, to the zoophyte, which exhibits a commencement of Animal life, up through Animal to Man, with a gradual complexity of organism and gradual enhancement of the Animal Life; so that from simple processes of assimilation and reproduction our investigation rises to locomotion, sensation, intelligence, morality, and sociality. The great dynamic difference between inorganic and organic-that is to say, the first vital act—is assimilation; add thereto the act of reproduction, and you have the whole life of a cell, the simplest of organisms."

Each life, organic and animal (for physiologists difference, or differentiate, them according to their organs and products), has three laws. "The first law of Vegetable Life, the necessary basis of all our study of life, without any exception for the case of man, consists in the renewal of its substance, which everything constantly requires. This fundamental law is followed by that of growth and decay, ending in death. Death is not in itself the necessary consequent of life, but it is everywhere the constant result of it. Lastly, this first Biological system is completed by the law of reproduction, by which the preservation of the species compensates the loss of the individual." (Comte.)

In fine, the organic life is subordinate to the animal, and only makes itself known when the body is out of health or diseased. Its processes are occult. The old axiom is true -the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick. The Animal life depends on the Organic, from which it derives its support, and acts and re-acts upon it. The

organic life is the life of nutrition, the animal life the life of relation. The one concerns man, the individual organism; the other concerns society, the collective organism. The organic life is limited and defined; the animal life (relatively speaking) unlimited and undefined. The one dies with the individual organism; the other lives (ie., subjectively in thoughts, memories and affections) when that organism is extinct. In complexity and dignity the animal life is superior to the merely organic, and serves, as has been indicated, higher and nobler uses. The animal life is born after the organic, and dies before it. The life of the brain and nervous system dies before that of the heart and lungs. The animal life could have no existence apart from its vegetive basis, the organic; but it is to the animal life, the life of relation, that we owe everything which renders us worthy members of the body politic. It is to the development of the life of relation between man and man, and man with the animals he has domesticated, that we owe all civilisations, religions, arts, and sciences-in fine, all those things which render this earth a tolerable dwelling-place.

Man's spontaneous social instincts have led him to expand and cultivate this life of relation, so soon as his personal organic wants were satisfied, as Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, and Positivism prove. Sociology has its root in the family, one of the earliest developments of the life of relation; and the larger relations embraced in the terms City, Nation, and Humanity grow out of the family relation. It is the first term of the series and the most important. The axe is laid at the root of Society itself, as true thinkers have ever felt, where the permanence of the family tie is jeopardised. The wider and vaguer relations are impossible where the narrower and sharper-defined relations are absent. The first training in Universal Benevolence can be had only in the family. It is there that the first lessons of self-sacrifice are taught and learned; there that the Great Being, Humanity, is begun to be perceived, dimly it may be, in all her grand and tender beauty. It is idle for a man (and there have been such men) to speak of his love for his fellow-man, when he loves not "his own," those immediately dependent upon him. He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love the Humanity he has not seen?

FIFTH LECTURE.

MAN AS AN INDIVIDUAL, AND

SOCIAL BEING.

WE have already explained somewhat at length Bichat's definition of Life as twofold-namely, Organic (or Vegetal) and Animal. It was stated that each life has three laws obtained by analysis in the human organism. Of the laws of the Organic life Comte observes :

"Combining these three fundamental laws (laws of Growth or renovation, Death and Reproduction) of life under the dual form appropriate to all combinations, we find in them the expression, first of present existence; secondly, of successive development. Of the latter, there are two general results, Death and Reproduction, the second of which presupposes the first, though it does not emanate from it. The two parts of this dualism, viewed successively, constitute the system of the three primary biological Laws, Renovation of substance, Destruction of the individual, Conservation of the race. Each of these is subordinate to the preceding, yet does not result from it any more than the three astronomical laws of Kepler result from one another. Such, then, is the first scientific foundation of biological philosophy. Its intimate connection with Sociology adds to its importance and stability, incorporating it among the elementary principles of the final religion."

And of the laws of the Animal life Comte remarks :

“ Between the life of nutrition and the life of relation the profound insight of Bichat has pointed out a striking con

trast.

Animal functions, as he shows, are intermittent; Vegetal functions are continuous. This brings out more forcibly than ever the material preponderance of the latter. To make the contrast more complete, it should include a mention of its necessary consequence, the two-fold Law of Exercise which is peculiar to Animality. In the first place, the continuity of vegetal functions is incompatible with the sense of pleasure, even on the supposition that the plant possessed sensitive nerves, since pleasure always implies comparison, which is here out of the question. It is the intermittence of the nervo-muscular functions which make possible the consciousness of exertion, and which constantly suggest the desire for its repetition. In the second place, such repetition, mainly regulated by nutritive conditions, calls out another attribute of animal life, equally incompatible with continuity of function, the attribute of Habit. Philosophically regarded, Habit connects itself with the great law of Persistence, which obtains in every department of Cosmology, and is only modified in the vital order by the intermittence of the phenomena. It forms the necessary basis for the perfectibility of the individual, for this implies in every animal the existence of a nutritive system demanding a certain measure of theoretical and practical education-education, that is to say, of the sensitive and active faculties."

The life of relation being subordinated to that of nutrition, the consensus of animal life results from its subordination to vegetal life. Two modes of this subordination are-I, Personal; 2, Social. Of the Personal Mode Comte says:

"In the lower part of the Zoological scale, up to the point of complete separation of the sexes, only the first mode is possible. In these animals vital harmony is attained with almost as little effort as in plants. The instinct of Self-preservation, being identical with that of preservation of the race, is left undisturbed in its preponderance. There may, indeed, be some slight traces occasionally of the Social instinct, such as are found in several species of a grade hardly superior. But in that case they must remain undeveloped for want of any proper sphere. It is only when the efforts for self-preservation are suspended by the necessity of providing for the preservation of the race that the animal can be said, temporarily at least, to live for others. This new phase of existence implies, therefore, per

fect separation of the sexes; it implies, too, that the young shall be, to some extent, reared by the parents.

"The Sexual and Maternal instincts, having risen, necessarily modify the Nutritive instinct, especially in the female. The result is that we have, at all events for a time, something that deserves the name of family life. So long as it lasts, it exhibits that second and higher phase of vital harmony in which the faculties, instead of being concentrated on the individual, are devoted to the family. We see most striking instances, even in males, of utter regardlessness of self in the effort to preserve the young. All the powers of thought and action are given in these cases to the service of domestic love. The mental inferiority of lower animals prevents that divorce between the intellect and the heart which is the great obstacle to vital unity in the case of man. "All vertebrates, and the majority even of articulate animals, attain more or less perfectly the domestic state. But the general results differ widely in the social and unsocial races. In the latter, and they are the majority, domestic life lasts for a time only, and has no permanent influence. Here the vital harmony still preserves the egoistic character which we found in beings of a lower grade. The intellectual and active powers are only called out for purposes of self preservation; the method adopted being aggressive or defensive, according to the mode of nutrition. In carnivorous animals this permanent egoism is often carried to the degree of cruelty, the unity of impulse not being disturbed by any antagonistic feelings. Apart from the periods of sexual desire or of maternal activity, the tiger, and even the tigress, and still more the crocodile or boa, are wholly occupied with themselves. The moment that individual wants have been satisfied, they fall back into mental and bodily torpor. With them the animal functions simply subserve the purposes of their organic life."

Of the Social Mode, Comte says:

"But with the social race it is otherwise. It is indeed only in the human race, from reasons to be examined afterwards, that we find the Social State fully developed. Still, the happiness of living for others is not entirely monopolised by Man. Many animals possess it likewise, and, indeed, give evidence of a higher degree of sympathy than our own, although the practical results of it are not so great as with us. In these higher races a careful distinction should be made between social and domestic feeling. Georges Leroy

has pointed out very clearly the contrast in this respect between the dog and the stag, and there are many other instances not less striking. When domestic affection preponderates, the only effect of the social instinct is to render the family life permanent; whereas, without this motive, it would be temporary. The charm of this simple mode of existence, and the absence of any wider sphere for the social instinct, confine its function to the secondary purpose of strengthening the domestic feelings. The social sympathies have no deep influence except with races analogous to the canine; and in these the conjugal and parental affections are weak.

"In this last case, the only way in which the animal can satisfy its sympathetic propensities is by giving itself up entirely to the service of a higher race. But for this alliance to be effective, it must be individual; there can be no collective union between the two species. If the inferior animal be carnivorous, it may then become a military ally, even against members of the same species as the master whom it has chosen. For reasons easily understood, it is always our own species that is selected for this kind of association by all animals capable of it. Indeed, we are often incommoded by animals associating with us against our wish. Whatever has been said to the contrary, there can be no doubt that this association is voluntary, since most of the races that adopt it might withdraw from it easily, were it, on the whole, repugnant. So far from there . being anything degrading in this free submission, it indicates the same kind of wisdom as that which leads men to seek frequent intercourse with their superiors. Under theological systems, the highest aspirations of men were to live ultimately with gods or angels. Is it strange that dogs or horses should seek to associate themselves with beings of a higher order than themselves? Pride alone could deter any being from a connection so sure to satisfy his noblest sympathies. Here, then, in the Animal Kingdom, is the first spontaneous form of the great sociological principle that all permanent unions between independent beings must rest on love.

"Thus, although Egoism is the more ordinary basis of unity among animals, there are still many races which approximate through Altruism to a unity of a nobler and more beautiful kind, and also more complete and durable. Exceptional though such cases be, yet as Buffon, who has