Despite his egoism and individualism, Spencer held that life in the community was important. Because the relation of parts to one another was one of mutual dependency, and because of the priority of the individual ‘part’ to the collective, society could not do or be anything other than the sum of its units. This view is evident, not only in his first significant major contribution to political philosophy, Social Statics but in his later essays–some of which appear in later editions of The Man versus the State.