Social pathology / by Samuel George Smith.

  • Smith, Samuel George, 1852-1915.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social pathology / by Samuel George Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/408 (page 16)
    individuals and classes, so in performing the tasks of organized social life there is a struggle between the various social organs for activity and for supremacy. As living tissues form themselves into organs for the purposes of the physical life, so institutions are the social organs by which the social life expresses its purpose and does its work. It is worth while to consider the parallel between the two and then to note the social struggle by which the family and the church, as well as the industrial organization, have in modern times become subordinate to the state, the dominant organ of social life. Those who teach biology describe the processes by which the activities of life become definite. Whether a living thing be an individual or a cluster of individuals, it is often hard to decide. There are no definite physical organs and no well-defined processes of life. Any particular place in the jellyfish against which food floats will do for a stomach. It is a long time before the digestive apparatus with a true stomach is developed, and it is only when the higher forms of life are reached that the various organs for the bodily functions are made manifest. The ascent of life is marked by the increase in the number of organs and in the definiteness of the function of each of them. The crowning triumph of the physical life of the world is the development of the nervous system with its superb achievement in producing the brain of man. Physiologists tell us, however, that even in the highest forms of life the work of one organ is sometimes performed by another when the proper organ is disabled. Through the nerves tele- graphic communication is set up by new and unusual routes but the work goes on. If one part of the process of digestion is im- paired, the other organs, though overworked, seek to supply the lack. This is doubtless an effort to revert under necessity to the conditions of life before organs were differentiated. Physical organs seem to come into being from some undefined sense of need. From the eye point to the fully developed organ of sight the lure of light is calling the body to come into fellow- ship. A familiar doctrine of economics is that human wants pre- cede the supply just as human desire precedes human action. As hitherto the consciousness of want has inspired a latent energy to supply the want, so we may dare to hope that every well- defined social desire will at last be satisfied.