molecular waves^ that are indefinitely diffosed in low types^ and in higli types are carried along definite channels (the function of which has been significantly called internuneialj. It is fulfilled in societies by the signs of feelings and thoughts^ conveyed from person to person; at first in vague ways and only at short distances, but afterwards more definitely and at greater distances. That is to say, the inter-nuncial function, not achievable by stimuli physically transferred, is nevertheless achieved by language.
The mutual dependence of parts which constitutes organization is thus effectually established. Though discrete instead of concrete, the social aggregate is rendered a living whole« § 222. But now, on pursuing the course of thought opened by this objection and the answer to it, we arrive at an implied contrast of great significance — a contrast fundamentally affecting our idea of the ends to be achieved by social life.
Though the discreteness of a social organism does not prevent sub-division of f imctions and mutual dependence of parts, yet it does prevent that differentiation by which one part becomes an organ of feeling and thought, while other parts become insensitive. High animals of whatever class are distinguished from low ones by complex and well-integrated nervous systems. While in inferior types the minute scattered ganglia may be said to exist for the benefit of other structures, the concentrated ganglia in superior types are the structures for the benefit of which the rest may be said to exist. Though a developed nervous system so directs the actions of the whole body as to preserve its integrity; yet the wel&re of the nervous system is the ultimate object of all these actions: damage to any other organ being serious only because it immediately or remotely entails that pain or loss of pleasure which the nervous system suffers. But the discreteness of a society negatives differentiations car- A SOCIBTT IS AN ORGANISM. 479 ried to thiB extreme. In an individnal organism. tlie minate living nnits^ most of them permanently localized, growing up, working, reproducing, and dying away in their respective places, are in successive generations moulded to their respective functions; so that some become specially sentient and others entirely insentient. But it is otherwise in a social organism. The units of this, out of contact and much less rigidly held in their relative positions, cannot be so much differentiated as to become feelingless units and units which monopolize feeling. There are, indeed, slight traces of such a differentiation. Humaii beings are unlike in the amounts of sensation and emotion producible in them by like causes: here great callousness, here great susceptibility, is characteristic. In the same society, even where its members are of the same race, and still more where its members are of dominant and subject races, there exists a contrast of this kind. The mechanically -working and hard-living units are less sensitive than the mentally-working and more protected units. But while the regulative structures of the social organism tend, like those of the individual organism, to become seats of feeling, the tendency is checked by this want of physical cohesion which brings fixity of function; and it is also checked by the continued need for feeling in the mechanically-working units for the do^ discharge of their functions.
Hence, then, a cardinal difference in the two kinds of organisms. In the one, consciousness is concentrated in a small part of the aggregate. In the other, it is diffused throughout the aggregate: all the units possess the capacities for happiness and misery, if not in equal degrees, still in degrees that approximate. As, then, there is no social sensorium, it results that the welfare of the aggregate, considered apart from that of the units, is not an end to be sought. The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society. It has ever 480 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOOT.
to be remembered that great as may be the efforts made for the prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims of the body politic are nothing in themselyes, and become something only in so far as they embody the claims of its component individuals.
§ 223. From this last consideration, which is a digression rather than a part of the argument, let us now return and sum up the various reasons for regarding a society as an organism.
It undergoes continuous growth; as it grows, its parts, becoming unlike, exhibit increase of structure; the unlike parts simultaneously assume activities of unlike kinds; these activities are not simply different, but their differences are so related as to make one another possible; the reciprocal aid thus given causes mutual dependence of the parts; and the mutually-dependent parts, living by and for one another, form an aggregate constituted on the same general principle as an individual organism. The analogy of a society to an organism becomes still clearer on learning that eveiy organism of appreciable size is a society; and on further learning that in both, the lives of the units continue for some time if the life of the aggregate is suddenly arrested, while if the aggregate is not destroyed by violence its life greatly exceeds in duration the lives of its units. Though the two are contrasted as respectively discrete and concrete, and though there results a difference in the ends subserved by the organization, there does not result a difference in the laws of the organization: the required mutual influences of the parts, not transmissible in a direct way, being transmitted in an indirect way.
Having thus considered in their most general forms the reasons for regarding a socieiy as an organism, we are prepared for following out the comparison in detail. We shall find that the further we pursue it the closer does the analogy appear.
CHAPTER III.
SOCIAL GROWTH.
^ 224. SociBTiBB, like living bodies^ begin as germsoriginate from masses which are extremely minute in comparison with the masses some of them eventuallj reach. That out of small wandering hordes such as the lowest races now form^ have arisen the largest societies, is a conclusion not to be contested. The implements of pre-historic peoples, ruder even than existing savages use, imply absence of those arts by which alone large aggregations of men are made possible. Religious ceremonies that survived among ancient historic races, pointed back to a time when the progenitors of those races had flint knives, and got fire by the friction of wood^ and so must have lived in such small clusters as are alone possible before the rise of agriculture.
The implication is that by processes of integration, direct and indirect, there have in course of time been produced social aggregates a million times in size the aggregates which alone existed in the remote past. Here, then, is a growth reminding us, by its degree, of growth in living bodies.
§ 225. Between this trait of organic evolution and the answering trait of super-organic evolution, there is a further parallelism: the growths in aggregates of different classes are extremely various.
Glancing over the entire assemblage of animal types, I I 482 THB IKDUCnOVS OP 8OCIOL0OT.
we see tliat the members of one large class, the Protozoa, scarcely erer increase beyond that microscopic size with which every higher animal begins. Among the mnltitndinons and varied Coelentercday the masses range from that of the small Hydra to that of the large Mednsa. The annnlose and molloscons types, respectively show as immense contrasts between their snpenor and inferior members. And vertebrate animaLi, much larg^ on the average than the rest, display among themselves enormous differences.
Kindred varieties of growth strike ns when we contemplate the entire assembUge of human societies. Scattered over many regions there are minute hordes — still extant samples of the primordial type of society. We have Wood-Yeddahs living sometimes in pairs, and only now and then assembling; we have Bushmen wandering about in families and forming larger groups but occasionally; we have Fuegians clustered by the dozen or the score. Tribes of Australians, of Tasmanians, of Andamanese, are variable within the limits of perhaps twenty to fifty. And similarly, if the region is inhospitable, as with the Esquimaux, or if the arts of' life are undeveloped, as with the Digger-Indians, or if adjacent higher races are obstacles te growth^ as with Indian Hill-tribes like the Juangs, this limitation to primitive size continues. Where a fruitful soil affords much food, and where a more settled life, leading te agriculture, again increases the supply of food, we meet with larger social aggregates: instance those in the Polynesian Islands and in many parts of Africa. Here a hundred or two, here several thousands, here many thousands, are held together more or less completely in one mass. And then in the highest societies instead of partially-aggregated thousands we have completely-aggregated millions.
§ 226. The growths of individual and social organisms are allied in another respect. In each case size augments by SOCIAL GEOWTH. 483 two processes^ wbich go on sometimes separately^ sometimes together. There is increase by simple multiplication of unitSj causing enlargement of the group; there is increase by union of groups^ and again by union of groups of groups. The first parallelism is too simple to need illustration; but the facts which show us the second must be set forth.
Organic integration^ treated of at length in the Principles of Biology, §§ 180 — 211^ must be here summarized to make the comparison intelligible. The compounding and re-compounding as shown us throughout the vegetal kingdom^ may be taken firsts as most easily followed. Plants of the lowest orders are minute cells, some kinds of which in their myriads colour stagnant watei*s, and others compose green films on damp surfaces. By clustering of such cells are formed smaU threads, discs^ globes, etc., as well as amorphous masses and laminated masses. One of these last, called a thallus when scarcely at all differentiated, as in a seaweed, and a frond in cryptogams that have some structure, is an extensive but simple group of the protophytes first named. Temporarily united in certain low cryptogams, fronds become permanently united in higher cryptogams: then forming a series of foliar surfaces joined by a creeping stem. Out of this comes the phsonogamic axis — a shoot with its foliar organs or leaves. That is to say, there is now a permanent cluster of clusters. And then, as these axes develop lateral axes, and as these again branch, the compounding advances to higher stages. In the animalkingdom the like happens; though in a less regular and more disguised manner. The smallest animal, like the smallest plant, is a minute group of living molecules or physiological units. There are many forms and stages showing us the clustering of these smallest animals. Sometimes, as in the compound Vorticell-oB and in the Sponges, their individualities are scarcely at all masked; but as evolution of the composite aggregate advances, the individualities of the component aggregates become less distinct. In some Oceienterata, though they retain considerable independence, which they show by moving about like Amoahod when separated^ they have their individualities mainly merged in that of the aggregate formed of them: instance the common Hydnu Tertiary aggregates similarly result from the massing of secondary ones. Sundry modes and phases of the process ure observable among coelenterate. types. There is the branched hydroid, in which the individual polypes preserve their identities, and the polypidom merely holds them together; and there are forms, such as Veletla, in which the polypes have been so modified and fused, that their individualities were long xmreeognized. Again, among the Moi' luscoida we have feebly-united tertiary aggregates in the Salpid(Bj while we hare, in the Botryllidce, masses in which the tertiary aggregate, greatly consc^dated, obscures the individualities of the secondary aggregates. So, too, is it with certain annuloid types; and, as I have endeavoured to show, with the Armulosa generally. {Prin, of BioL, § 205.)
Social growth proceeds by an analogous compounding and re-compounding. The primitive social group, like the primitive group of physiological units with which organic evolution begins, never attains any considerable size by simple increase. Where, as among Fuegians, the supplies of wild food yielded by an inclement habitat will not enable more than a score or so to live in the same place — where, as among Andamanese, limited to a strip of shore backed by impenetrable bush, forty individuals is about the number that can find prey without g^ing too for from their temporary abode — ^where, as among Bushmen, wandering over barren tracts, small hordes are alone possible, and even families ^' are sometimes obliged to separate, since the same spot will not afford sufficient sustenance for all;'* we have extreme instances of the necessary limitation of simple groups, and the necessary formation of migrating groups when the limit is passed. Even in tolerably pro* 80CUL QROWTH. 485 ductivo habitats, fission of the gronps is eventually necessitated in a kindred manner. Spreading as its number increases, a primitive tribe presently reaches a diffusion at which its parts become incoherent; and it then gradually separates into tribes that become distinct as fast as their continually-diverging dialects pass into different languages. Frequently nothing further happens than repetition of this. Conflicts of tribes, dwindling or extinction of some, growths and spontaneous divisions of others, continue. The formation of a larger society results only by combination of these smaller societies; which occurs without obliterating the divisions previously caused by separations. This process may be seen now going on among various uncivilized races, as it once went on among the ancestors of the civilized races. Instead of absolute independence of small hordes, such as the lowest savages show us, more advanced savages show us slight cohesions among larger hordes. In North America each of the three* great tribes of Gomanches consists of various bands, having such feeble combination only, as results from the personal character of the great chief. So of the Dakotahs there are, according to Burton, seven principal bands, each including minor bands, numbering altogether, according to Catlin, forty-two; and in like manner the five Iroquois nations had severally eight tribes. Closer unions of these slightly-coherent original groups, arise under favourable conditions, but only now and then become permanent. A common form of the process is that described by Mason as occurring among the Karens. " Each village, with its scant domain, is an independent state, and every chief a prince; but now and then, a little Napoleon arises, who subdues a kingdom to himself, and builds up an empire. The dynasties, however, last only with the controlling mind.'* The like happens in Africa.
Livingstone says — " Formerly all the Maganja were united under the government of their great Chief, Undi; * * * but after Undies death it fell to pieces. * * * This has been the 486 THK INDDCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGT.
inevitable fate of every African Empi^ from time immemorial/' Only occasionally do tliere result compound social aggregates that endure for considerable periods^ as Dahomey^ or as Asliantee> which is '^an assemblage of states owing a kind of feudal obedience to the soyereign/' The histories of Madagascar and of yarious Polynesian islands filso display these transitory compound groups, out of which at length come in some cases permanent ones. In the earliest times of the extinct civilized races^ like stages were passed through. In the words of Maspero, Egypt was " divided at first into a great number of tribes, which at several points simultaneously began to establish small independent states, every one of which had its laws and its worship/' The compound groups of Greeks first formed, were those minor ones resulting from the subjugation of weaker towns by stronger neighbouring ones. And in Northern Europe during pagan times, the numerous German tribes, each Tfith its cantonal divisions, illustrated this second stage of aggregation. After such coiilpound societies are consolidated^ repetition of the process on a Larger scale produces doubly-compound societies; which, usually cohering but feebly, become in some cases quite coherent.
Maspero infers that the Egyptian states described above as resulting from integration of tribes, were swallowed up into two great principalities. Upper Egjrpt and Lower Egypt, which were eventually united: the small states becoming provinces. The boasting records of Mesopotamian kings similarly show us this union of unions going on. So, too, in Greece the integration previously displayed locally, began afterwards to combine all the minor societies into two confederacies. Before and after the Christian era, the like happened throughout Northern Europe. During Roman days there arose for defensive purposes federations of tribes which eventually consolidated; and subsequently these were compounded into still larger aggregates. Then after a period of vague and varying combinations, there SOCIAL GROWTH. 487 came^ in later times, as is well illustrated hj French history, a massing of small feudal territories into provinces and a subsequent massing of these into kingdoms.
So that in both organic and super-organio growth, we see a process of compounding and re-compounding carried to various stages. In both cases, after some consolidation of the smallest aggregates there comes the process of forming larger aggregates bj union of them; and in both cases repetition of this process makes secondary aggregates into tertiary ones.
§ 227. Organic growth and super-organic growth haye yet another analogy. As above said, increase by multiplication of individuals in a group, and increase by union of groups, may go on simultaneously; and it does this in both cases.
The original clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lack density. Creatures of low types occupy large spaces considering the quantities of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spread over areas that are wide relatively to the numbers of their component individuals. But as integration in animals is shown by concentration as well as by bulkiness; so that social integration that results from the clustering of flusters, is joined with augmentation of the number contained by each cluster. If we contrast the populousness of regions inhabited by wild tribes with the populousness of equal regions in Europe; or if we contrast the density of population in England under the Heptarchy with its present density; we see that besides the growth produced by union of groups there has gone on interstitial growth. Just as the higher animal has become not only larger than the lower but more solid; so, too, has the higher society.
Social growth, then, equally with the growth of a living body, shows us the fundamental trait of evolution under a twofold aspect. Integration is displayed both in the forma- 488 XH£ IITDCCTIOHS Of SOCIOLOGT.
tion of a larger mass^ and in the progress of saeh mass towards that coherence due to closeness of parts.
It is proper to add, however, that there is a mode of social growth to which organic gprowth afFords no parallel — ^that caased by the migration of nnits from one societj to another. Among many primitive gronps and a few developed ones, this is a considerable factor; but, generally, its effect bears so small a ratio to the effects of growth by increase of population and coalescence of groups, that it does not much qualify the analogy.
CHAPTER IV.
SOCIAL 8TRUCTUBES.
§ 228. In societies^ as in liying bodies^ increase of mass is habitually accompanied by increase of stmcture. Along with that integration which is the primary trait of evolution, both exhibit in a high degree the secondary trait, differentiation.
The association of these two characters in animals was described in the Principles of Biology, § 44. Excluding certain low kinds of them whose activities are little above those of plants, we recognized the general law that large aggregates have high organizations. The qualifications of this law which go along with differences of medium, of habitat, of type, are numerous; but when made they leave intact the truth that for carrying on the combined life of a great mass, complex arrangements are required. So, too, is it with societies. As we progress from the smallest groups to larger; from simple groups to compound groups; from compound groups to doubly compound ones; the unlikenesses of parts increase. The social mass, homogeneous when minute, habitually gains in heterogeneity along with each increment of growth; and to reach great size must acquire great heterogeneity. Let us glance at the leading stages.
Naturally in a state like that of the Gayaguas or Wood-Indians of South America, so little social that '' one family 490 TH£ INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGT.
lives at a distance from anotber^'' social organization is impossible; and even where there is some slight association of families^ organization does not establish itself while they are few and wandering. Groups of Esqaimanz, of Australians^ of Bushmen, of Fuegians, are without even that primary contrast of parts implied by settled chieftainship. Their members are subject to no control but such as is temporarily acquired by the stronger, or more cunning, or more experienced: not even a nucleus is present. Habitually where larger simple groups exist, we find some kind of head. Though not a uniform rule (for, as we shall hereafter see, the genesis of a controlling agency depends on the nature of the social actiyities), this is a genera! rule. The headless clusters, wholly ungovemed, are incoherent, and separate before they acquire considerable sizes; but along with maintenance of an aggregate approaching to, or exceeding, a hundred, we ordinarily find a simple or compound ruling agency— one or more men claiming and exercising authority that is natural, or supernatural, or both. This is the first social differentiation. Soon after it there frequently comes another, tending to form a diyision between regulative and operative parts. In the lowest tribes this is. rudely represented only by the contrast between the relative positions and functions of the two sexes: the men, having unchecked control, carry on such external actions as the tribe shows ns, chiefly in war; while the women are made subject drudges who perform the less skilled parts of the process of sustentation. But that tribal growth and development of chieftainship which gives military superiority, presently results in enlargement of the operative part by the addition of captives. This begins unobtrusively. While in battle the men are killed and often eaten, the noncombatants are enslaved: the Patagonians, for example, make slaves of women and children taken in war. Later, and especially when cannibalism ceases, comes the enslavement of male captives; whence results, in some cases, an SOCIAL BTBUCTURES. 491 operative part clearly marked off from the regulative part. Among the Chinooks^ Boss tells us that '* slaves do all the laborious work/' We read that the Belnchi^ avoiding the hard labour of cultivation, impose it upon the Jutts, the ancient inhabitants whom they have subjugated. According to Beecham, it is usual on the Gold Coast to make the slaves clear the ground for cultivation. And by the Felatahs, '^ the male slaves are employed in the various trades of building, working in iron, weaving, making shoes or clothes, and in traffic; the female slaves in spinning, baking, and selling water in the streets.^' Along with that increase of mass caused by union of primary social aggregates into secondary ones, a further unlikeness of parts begins to. arise. The holding together of the compound cluster implies a head of the whole as well as heads of the parts; and a differentiation analogous to that which originally produced a chief, now produces a chief of chiefs. Sometimes the combination is made for defence against a common foe, and sometimes it results from conquest by one tribe of the rest. In this last case the predominant tribe, in the maintenance of its supremacy, develops more highly its military character: so becoming unlike the others.
How after such clusters of clusters have been so consolidated that their united powers can be wielded by one governing agency, there come alliances with, or subjugations of, other such compound clusters, ending from time to time in coalescence — how when this happens there i*esults still gi-eater complexity in the governing agency, with its king, local rulers, and petty chiefs — ^how, at the same time, there arise more marked divisions of classes — ^militaiy, priestly, slave, etc.; it needs not to point out more specifically. That complication of structure accompanies increase of mass, is sufficiently obvious.
§ 229. This increase of heterogeneity, which in both 492 THI IKDUCnONB 0? SOCIOLOGT.
classes of aggregates goes along witli gprowth, presents another trait in common. Beyond anlikenesses of parts resulting from development of tlie co-ordinating agencies, there presently follow nnlikenesses among the agencies coordinated— ^the organs of alimentation, etc., in the one case, and the industrial organs in the other.
When animal-aggregates of the lowest order unite to form one of a higher order, and when, again, these secondary aggregates are compounded into tertiary aggpregates, each component is at first similar in structure to the other components; but in the course of evolution dissimilarities arise and become more and more decided. Among the Ooelenterata the stages are clearly indicated. From the sides of the common hydra, bud out young ones which, when they have fully developed, separate from the parent. In the compound hydroids the young polypes produced in like manner, remain permanently attached, and, themselves repeating the process, presently form a branched aggregate. When the members of the compound group lead similar and almost independent lives, as in various rooted genera, they remain similar: save those of them which become reproductive organs. But in the floating and swimming clusters, formed by a kindred process, the differentlyconditioned members have become different, while assuming different kinds of activities or functions. It is thus with the minor social groups combined into a major social group. Each tribe, originally self-sufficing, had within itself such feebly-marked industrial structures as sufficed for its low type of life; and these were like those of each other tribe. But union of them greatly facilitates exchange of commodities; and if, as mostly happens, the component tribes severally occupy localities favourable to different kinds of production, different industrial actions are initiated, and there result diffisrences of industrial structures. Even between tribes not united, as those of Australia, there is barter of products furnished by their SOCIAL STBUCTUBES. 493 fespectiye habitats: so long, of course^ as they are not at war. And evidently where there is reached such a stage of integration as in Madagascar^ or as in the chief Negro states of Africa^ the internal peace that follows subordination to one government, makes commercial intercourse easy. The like parts, being permanently held together^ mutual dependonce becomes possible; and along with growing mutual dependence there goes growing unlikeness of parts.
§ 230. The advance of organization which thus follows the advance of aggregation, alike in individual organisms and in social organisms, conforms in both cases to the same general law: differentiations proceed from the more general to the more special. First broad and simple contrasts of parts; then within each of the parts thus primarily contrasted, changes which make unlike divisions of them; then within each of these unlike sub-divisions minor unlikenesses; and so on continually.
The successive stages in the development of a vertebrate column, serve to illustrate this law in animals. At the outset an elongated depression of the blastoderm, called the ''primitive groove,'^ represents the entire cerebro-spinal canal: as yet there are no marks of vertebrae, nor even a contrast between the part which is to become head and the parf. which is to become back-bone. Presently the ridges bounding this groove, growing up and folding over more rapidly at the anterior end, which at the same time widens, begin to make the skull distinguishable from the spine; and the commencement of segmentation in the spinal part, while the cephalic part remains unsegmented, strengthens the contrast. Within each of these main divisions minor divisions soon arise. The rudimentary cranium, bending forwards upon itself, simultaneously acquires three dilatations indicating the contained nervous structures; while the segmentation of the spinal column, spreading to its ends, produces an almost-uniform series of '' protovertebrsB." At first these proto-vertebras not only little from one another, but each is relatiyely simple