A higher species! Paul von Lilienfeld, one of the principal advocates of the view that society is an organism of a higher kind, has pointed out that in this respect an especially striking parallel can be drawn between ordinary organisms and this super-organism. All higher beings propagate sexually; lower beings asexually, by partition, by budding and sometimes by conjugation. We have shown that simple partition corresponds exactly to the growth and the further development of the association based on blood relationship, which existed before the state. This grows until it becomes too large for cohesion; it then loses its unity, divides, and the separate hordes, if they associate at all, remain in a very loose connection, without any sort of closer articulation. The amalgamation of exogamic groups is comparable to conjugation.
_The state, however, comes into being through sexual propagation._ All bisexual propagation is accomplished by the following process: The male element, a small, very active, mobile, vibrating cell--the spermatozoön--searches out a large inactive cell without mobility of its own--the ovum, or female principle--enters and fuses with it. From this process, there results an immense growth; that is to say, a wonderful differentiation with simultaneous integration. The inactive peasantry, bound by nature to their fields, is the ovum, the mobile tribe of herdsmen the spermatozoön, of this sociologic act of fecundation; and its resultant is the ripening of a higher social organism more fully differentiated in its organs, and much more complete in its integrations. It is easy to find further parallels. One may compare the border feuds to the manner in which innumerable spermatozoa swarm about the ovum until finally one, the strongest or most fortunate, discovers and conquers the micropyle. One may compare the almost magical attraction which the ovum has for the spermatozoön, to the no less magical power by which the herdsmen from the steppes are drawn into the cultivated plains.
But all this is no proof for the “organism.” The problem, however, has been pointed out.
We have followed the genesis of the state, from its second stage onward, in its objective growth as a political and jural form with economic content. But it is far more important to examine its subjective growth, its socio-psychological “differentiation and integration,” since all sociology is nearly always social psychology. First, then, let us discuss integration.