Compound aggregates of which the parts, differently related to conditions, assume different functions, must have channels for transfer which develop as the aggregates grow. Through the mere double- walled sac constituting a hydra, nutritive matter absorbed by the inner layer, may reach the outer layer without visible openings: passing, as we may assume, along lines of least resistance which, once opened, are continually followed and made more permeable. With advance to larger aggregates having parts further from the stomach, there comes first a branching stomach— a gastric cavity that sends ramifications throughout the body. Distribution of crude nutritive matters through such gastric sinuses occurs in the Medusce and again in the Pla/naricd. But in those higher types characterized by a peri-yiBceral sac contaimng the filtered nutriment, this, which is the radiment of a yascolar system, becomes the cayity oat of which there diverge channels ramifying through the tissue^ — lacuTKB probably formed by the draughts of liquid caused by local demands, and established by the repetition of such draughts. With societies^ as with living bodies, channels of communication are produced by the movements which they afterwards facilitate: each transit making subsequent transits easier. Sometimes lines opened by animals are followed; as by the Nagas, who use the tracks made through the jungle by wild beasts. Similarly caused, the early paths of men are scarcely better than these. As described by Thompson, the roads of the Bechuanas are ''with difficulty to be distinguished from those made by the qoaghas and antelopes.'' Burton says that throughout Eastern Africa ''the most frequented routes are foot-tracks like goat-walks.'' And even in Abyssinia, according to Parkyns, a high road " is only a track worn by use, and a little larger than the sheep-paths, from the fact of more feet passing over it.'' Even with such social growth as produces towns carrying on much intercourse, there is at first nothing more than an undesigned production of a less resistant channel by force of much passing. Describing the road between the old and new capitals of the Bechuanas, Burchell says — "This consists of a number of footpaths wide enough only for a single person, and running either parallel to each other, or crossing very obliquely. I counted from twelve to about eighteen or twenty of these paths, within the breadth of a few yards."
In animal organisms, ascending from the stage in which there is a mere oozing of nutritive liquids through the most permeable places in the tissues, to the stage in which occasional currents move feebly through indefinite sinuses, we come at length to the stage in which there are regular motions of blood along vessels having definite walls. Am before pointed out, the formation of a true vascular system 528 THS iNDUcrrioKs of socioloot.
begins in the central region and spreads to the periphery: at first there arises in the peri-visoeral sac a short openmouthed tabe^ by the rhythmical contractions of which agitation is kept up in the surrounding liquid, now entering one end of this pulsating tube and now the other; and gradually this primitive heart, elongating and giving off derivative contractile vessels which ramify into the lacunce, originates a vascular system. The like happens with the channels of communication through the social organism: indefinite lacunce^ as we see that they all are at the outset, first acquire definite boundaries in the parts where there is most traffic. Describing the East African roads, which are in most places like goat-walks. Burton says that '^ where fields and villages abound they are closed with rough hedges, horizontal tree-trunks, and oven rude stockades, to prevent trespassing and pilferage/^ So, too, in Dahomey, though the roads are said to be mostly footpaths, yet Burton says that '^ the roads to the coast, except in a few places, are good enough for wheeled vehicles,*' while " the road, six or seven miles long, separating the two capitals, may compare with the broadest in England;" and from the capital of Ashantee, described as having broad, clean streets, there radiate towards distant parts of the territory eight pathways, cut by successive kings through the forests-doubtless replacing the primitive paths made by traffic. Ignoring Roman roads, which were nob produced by local evolution, we nmy trace in our history this centrifugal development of channels of communication. The paving of the central parts of London did not begin till after the eleventh century; and, having got as far outwards as Holborn at the beginning of the fifteenth century, it spread into some of the suburbs during the sixteenth century. In Henry VllltVs reign a way, when too deep and miry to be traversed was '^merely abandoned and a new track selected.'' Up to 1750 the great north road from London was a turnpike for the first 100 miles, and '' north of that point there was only a narrow causeway fit for pack-horses^ THE DISTBIBUTINQ STSTBM. 529 flanked with clay slonglis on either side/' At the same time, in North-England and Mid-England, the roads were '^ still for the most part entirely nnenclosed/' Then macadamization, an improvement belonging to our own century, beginning with main lines of communication, gradually extended itself centrifugally first to all turnpike-roads, then to parish roads, and finally to private roads.
Further analogies may be indicated. "With increased pressure of traffic has come, in addition to the road, the railway; which, in place of a single channel for movement in both directions, habitually has a double channel — ^up-line and down-line^— analogous to the double set of tubes through which, in a superior animal, blood proceeds from the centre and towards the centre. As in the finished vascular system the great blood-vessels are the most direct, the divergent secondary ones less direct, the branches from these more crooked still, and the capillaries the most tortuous of all; so we see that these chief lines of transit through a society are the straightest, high roads less straight, parish roads more devious, and so on down to cart-tracks through fields. One more strange parallel exists. In considerably-developed animals, as many Mollusca, though the vascular system is so far complete in its central parts that the arteries have muscular coats, and are lined with '' pavement epithelium,^' it nevertheless remains incomplete at the periphery: the small blood-vessels terminate in lacuncB of the primitive kind. Similarly in the developed distributing system of a society, we see that while the main channels are definitely bounded and have surfaces fitted for bearing the wear and tear of great traffic, the divergent channels carrying less traffic are less highly structured; and the re-divergent ones, becoming less finished as they ramify, everywhere end in lacunce — unfenced, unmetalled tracks for farm-cart, horse, or pedestrian, through field or wood, over moor and mountain.
Notice must also be taken of the significant fact that M M C30 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.
iu proportion as organisms^ indiyidual and social^ develop largely the appliances for conflict with other organisms^ these channels of distribution arise not for internal snstentation only, but partly, and often mainly, for transferring materials from the sustaining parts to the expending parts. As in an animal with a large nervo- muscular system, arteries are formed more for carrying blood from the viscera to the brain and limbs than for carrying blood from one viscus to another; so in a kingdom with activities predominantly predatory the chief roads are those made for military purposes. The consumption of men and supplies in war, makes more necessary than all others the roads which take them; ^nd they are the first to assume definiteness. We see this in the above-named royal roads in Ashantee; again in the Ancient Peruvian royal roads for conveying troops; and we are reminded of the relation in the empire of the Bomans, between finished roads and military activity at remote points. The principle, however, remains the same: be it in the commercial I'ailways of England or the military railways of Bussia, the channels arise between places of supply and places of demand, though the consumption may be here in peace and there in war.
§ 246. When from the channels which carry, in the one case blood-corpuscles and serum and in the other case men and commodities, we turn to the movements along them, we meet with further analogies.
Devoid of channels for distribution, low types of animals show us nothing but an extremely slow, as well as irregular, diffusion through the tissues; and so in primitive societies, where nothing beyond a small amount of barter goes on, the exchanged products are dispersed very gradually and in indefinite ways: the movements are feeble, and do not constitute anything like circulation. On ascending to such a type as an ascidian, having a peri-visceral sac with pulsating vessel in it, we see a distribution of nutriment THE DISTRIBUTINQ SYSTEM. 531 whicli cannot be called circulation^ but which approaches to it: the pulsations^ setting up in the surrounding fluid such waves as send feeble currents through the sinuses and laeuncB, presently undergo a reversal, causing movement in the opposite direction. This alternation of waves now setting towards a certain part which thereupon becomes congested, and presently setting away from it towards parts which have been drained, is analogous to the first movement of distribution in developing societies. We do not begin with constant currents in the same directions; but we begin with periodical currents, now directed to certain spots and then away from them. Unquestionably, what when established we know as a fair, is the commercial wave in its first form. We find it in slightly advanced societies. The Sandwich Islanders met on the Wairuku river at stated times to exchange their products; and the Fijians of different islands, assembled occasionally at a fixed place for barter. Of course, with the increase of population these streams of people and commodities which set at intervals to and from certain places, become more frequent. The semi-civiL'zed African kingdoms show us stages. On the Lower Niger, " every town has a market once in four days," and at different parts of the river a large fair once a fortnight.
We learn from Park that in other cases, as at Sansanding, besides some daily sale there was a gfreat market once a week, to which crowds from the surrounding country came. And then in the largest places, such as Timbuctoo, constant distribution has replaced periodic distribution. So, too, in the Batta territory, Sumatra, there are assemblings for traffic every fourth day; and in Madagascar, besides the daily nmrket in the capital, there are markets at longer intervals in the provincial towns. Ancient American societies displayed this stage passing into a higher. Among the Chibchas, along with constant traffic, the greatest traffic was at eight-day intervals; and Mexico, besides daily markets, had larger markets every five days, which, in adjacent cities, 532 THE INDUCTIONS OP SOCIOLOGY.
were at different dates: there being meanwhile merchants who, Sahagun says, '' go through the whole country * * * buying in one district and selling in others'* — ^so foreshadowing a more developed system. Clearly these occasional assemblings and dispersings, shortening their intervals until they reach a daily bringing of products by some and buying by others, thus grow into a regular series of frequent waves, transferring things from places of supply to places of demand. Our own history shows how such slow periodic repletions and depletions, now in this locality and now in that, pass gradually into a rapid circulation. In early English times the great fairs, annual and other, formed the chief means of distribution, and remained important down to the seventeenth century, when not only villages but even small towns, devoid of shops, were irregularly supplied by hawkers who had obtained their stocks at these gatherings. Along with increased population, larger industrial centres, and improved channels of communication, local supply became easier; and so, frequent markets more and more fulfilled the purpose of infrequent fairs. Afterwards in chief places and for chief commodities, markets themselves multiplied; becoming in some cases daily. Finally came a constant distribution such that of some foods there is to each town an influx every morning, and even more than one in the day. The transition from times when the only movements of people and goods between places were private, slow, and infrequent, to times when there commenced at intervals of several days public vehicles moving at only four miles an hour, and then to times when these shortened their intervals and increased their speed while their lines of movement multiplied, ending in our own times when along each line of rails there goes many times daily at high speed a wave that is relatively vast; sufficiently show us how the social circulation progresses from feeble, slow, irregular movements to a rapid, regular, and powerful pulse.
§ 247. If from the channels of communication and the THE DISTBIBUTINO SY6TBH. 538 moyements along them^ we torn to the circulating currents themselves^ and consider their natures and their relations to the parts^ we still meet with analogies.
Belativelj simple in a low animal, the nutritive fluid becotoes in a high animal relatively complex — a heterogeneous combination of general and special materials required by, and produced by, the several parts. So, too, the currents of commodities, if they can be so ctdled, which move from place to place in a low society, are little varied in composition; but as we advance to high societies, the variety of components in the currents continually increases. Moreover, the parallelism of composition holds in another way; for in both cases relative simplicity is joined with crudity, whereas relative complexity in both cases results from elaboration. In low animal types the product of a rude digestion is carried in an unprepared state through extensions of the gastric cavity to the neighbourhood of the parts which need it; but in developed types the refined products are separated and distributed — ^protein substances of several kinds, fats, sugar, etc. And while the blood is thus made heterogeneous by containing many matters fitted for use, and while its heterogeneity is increased by the swarms of specially-adapted corpuscles which take part in the processes of purification, etc., it is made more heterogeneous still by the inorganic constituents which aid molecular change, as well as by the effete products of molecular change on their way to places of exit. If, now, with the currents in a low society, we contrast the currents in au advanced society, we see that here, too, the greater heterogeneity is mainly caused by the many kinds of manufactured articles fitted for consumption; and though certain waste products of social life do not return into the circulating currents, but are carried off by under-ground channels, yet other waste products are carried off along the ordinary channels of the circulation which bring materials for consumption. Next we have to note the special actions 53d} THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.
which the local structures exert on the general current of commodities. While in a living body the organs severally take from the blood eveiywhere carried through them, the materials needed for their sustentation, those which are occupied in excretion and secretion also severally take from the blood particular ingfredients, which they either cast out or compound. A salivary gland forms from the matters it appropriates, a liquid capable of changing starch into sugar and so aiding the subsequent preparation of food; the gastric follicles elaborate and pour out acids, etc., which help to dissolve the contents of the stomach; the liver, separating certain waste components, throws them into the intestine as bile, along with that glycogen it forms from other components which is to be re-absorbed for use; and the units of these several organs live, grow, and multiply, by carrying on their several businesses. So is it with social organs. While all of them, under restrictions to be hereafter specified, absorb from the distributed supply of commodities shares needful for their sustentatiou, such of them as carry on manufactures, large or small, also select from the heterogeneous streams of things that run everywhere, the materials which they transform; and afterwards return into these streams the elaborated products. Ignoring for the moment the familiar aspect of sale and purchase, under which these transactions present themselves to us, and contemplating simply the physical process, we see it to be undeniable that each industrial structure, allowing various materials to pass through its streets untouched, takes out of the mixed current those it is fitted to act upon; and throws into the circulating stock of things, sometimes through a different channel, the articles it has prepared for general consumption.
The fact that competition is common to the two cases must also be observed. Though commonly thought of as a phenomenon exclusively social, competition exists in a living body— not so obviously between parts that carry on THB DISTRIBUTING SYSTEM. 535 fche same function, as between parts that carry on different fonctions. The general stock of nutriment circulating through an organism has to support the whole. Each organ appropriates from this general stock all it can, for repair and growth. Whatever each takes diminishes by so much the amount available for the rest. All other organs theref oi-e, jointly and individually, compete for blood with each organ.
So that though the welfare of each is indirectly bound ffp with that of the rest; yet, directly, each is antagonistic to the rest. Hence it happens that extreme cerebral action so drafts away the blood as to stop digestion; that, conversely^ the visceral demand for blood after a heavy meal often so drains the brain as to cause sleep; and that extremely violent exertion, carrying an excessive amount of blood to the motor organs, may both arrest digestion and diminish thought and feeling. While these facts prove that there is competition, they also prove that the exalted function of a part caused by demands made on it, determines the flow of blood to it. Though, as we shall hereafter see, there is in the higher organisms a kind of regulation which secures a more prompt balancing of supplies and demands uuder this competitive arrangement, yet, primarily, the balancing results from the setting of blood towards parts in proportion to their activities. Morbid growths, which not only draw to themselves much blood but develop in themselves vascular structures to distribute it, show us how local tissueformation (which under normal conditions measures the waste of tissue in discharging function) is itself a cause of increased supply of materials. Now we have daily proof that in a society, not only individuals but classes, local and general, severally appropriate from the total stock of commodities as much as they can; and that their several abilities to appropriate normally depend upon their several states of activity. If less iron is wanted for export or home consumption, furnaces are blown out, men are discharged, and there flows towards the district a diminished 536 THE INDUCTIONS OP SOCIOLOGY.
stream of the things required for nutrition, causing ari'est of growth and, if continued, even decay. When a cotton famine entails greater need for woollens, the increased activity of the factories producing them, while it leads to the drawing in of more raw material and sending out of more manufactured goods, determines towards the cloth districts augmented supplies of all kinds — men, money, consumable, commodities; and there results enlargement of old factories and building of new ones. Evidently this process in each social organ, as in each individual organ, results from the tendency of the units to absorb all they can from the common stock of materials for sustentation; and evidently the resulting competition, not between units simply but between organs, causes in a society, as in a living body, high nutrition and growth of parts called into greatest activity by the requirements of the rest.
§ 248. Of course, along with these likenesses there go differences, due to the contrast named at the outset between the concreteness of an individual organism and the discreteness of a social organism. I may name, first, a difference which accompanies the likeness last dwelt upon.
If the persons forming a body politic were mostly fixed in their positions, as the units forming an individual body are, the feeding of them would have to be similarly effected. Their respective shares of nutriment, not simply brought to their neighbourhood, would have to be taken home to them. A process such as that by which certain kinds of food are daily carried round to houses by a class of locomotive units, would be the universal process. But as members of the body politic, though having stationary habitations and working places, are themselves locomotive, it results that the process of distribution is effected partly in this way and partly by their own agency. Further, there results from the same general cause, a difference between the ways in which motion is given to the circulating currents in the two THE DISTBIBUTINO SYSTEM. 537 cases. Physical cohesion of the parts in an individual living body, makes possible the propulsion of the nutritive liquid by a contractile organ; but lacking this physical cohesion, and lacking too the required metamorphosis of units, the bodypolitic cannot have its currents of commodities thus moved: though remotely produced by other forces, their motion has to be proximately produced by forces within the currents themselves.
Recognizing these unlikenesses, however, we see that they do but qualify the essential likenesses. In both cases so long as there is little or no differentiation of parts there is little or no need for channels of communication among the parts; and even a slight differentiation^ when such only that the unlike parts remain in close contact, does not demand appliances for transfer. But when the division of labour, physiological or sociological, has so far progressed that parts at some distance from one another co-operate, the growth of channels of distribution, with agents effecting distribution, becomes necessary; and the development of the distributing system has to keep pace with the other developments. A like necessity implies a like parallelism between the progressing circulations in the two cases.
Feeble activities, small amounts of exchange, obstacles to transfer, unite in preventing at first anything more than very slow and irregular repletions and depletions, now at one place now at another; but with increase of parts increasingly specialized in their functions, increasingly efficient therefore, and combining to produce an increased amount of general life, there goes an increased need for large distributions in constant directions. Irregular, weak and slow movements at long intervals, are changed into a regular rapid rhythm by strong and unceasing local demands. Yet more. With the advance of the aggregate, individual or social, to a greater heterogeneity, there goes advancing heterogeneity in the circulating currents; which, at first containing few crude matters, contain at last many prepared matters. In both cases, too, those stmctures which elaborate the requisites for sustentation, stand to these corrents in like relations — ^take from them the raw materials on which they have to operate, and directly or indirectly deliyer into them again the products; and in both cases these structures, competing with one another for their shares of the circulating stock of consumable matters, are enabled to appropriate, to repair themselves, and to grow, in proportion to their performances of functions.
Stated most generally, the truth we have to carry with us is that the distributing system in the social organism, as in the individual organism, has its development determined by the necessities of transfer among inter-dependent parts. Lying between the two original systems, which carry on respectively the outer dealings with surrounding eidstences, and the inner dealings with materials required for sustentation, its structure becomes adapted to the requirements of this carrying function between the two great systems as wholes, and between the sub-divisions of each.
CHAPTER IX.
THE REGULATING SYSTEM.
§ 249. Week observing How the great systems of organs, individual and social^ are originally marked off from one another, we recogpiized the general truth that the inner and outer parts become respectively adapted to those functions which their respective positions necessitate — the one having to deal with environing actions and agents, the other having to use internally-placed materials. We have seen how the evolution of interior structures is determined by the natures and distributions of these matters they are in contact with. We have now to see how the evolution of the structures carrying on outer actions is determined by the characters of things existing around.
Stated in a more concrete form, the fact to be here set forth is, that while the alimentary systems of animals and the industrial systems of societies, are developed into fitness for dealing with the substances, organic and inorganic, used for sustentation, the regulating and expending systems (nervo-motor in the one, and governmental-military in the other) are developed into fitness for dealing with surrounding organisms, individual or social— other animals to be caught or escaped from, hostile societies to be conquered or resisted. In both cases that organization which fits the aggregate for acting together as a whole in conflict with other aggregates^ indirectly results from the carrying on of the continued conflict with other aggregates.
§ 250. To be slow of speed is to be caught by an enemy; to be wanting in swiftness is to fail in catching prey: death being in either case the result. Sharp sight saves the herbivorous animal from a distant carnivore; and is an essential aid to the eagle's successful swoop on a creature far below, which would else have escaped. Obviously it is the same with quickness of hearing and delicacy of scent; the same with all improvements of limbs that increase the power, the agility, the accuracy of movements; the same with all appliances for attack and defence — claws, teeth, horns, etc. And equally true must it be that each advance in that nervous system which, using the information coming through the senses, excites and guides these external organs, becomes established by giving an advantage to its possessor in pre« sence of prey, enemies, and competitors. On glancing up from low types of animals having very imperfect eyes and feeble powers of. motion, to high types of animals having wide vision, considerable intelligence, and great activity, it becomes undeniable that where loss of life is entailed on the first by these defects, life is presei'ved in the last by these superiorities. The implication, then, is that successive improvements of the organs of sense and motion, and of the iuternal co-ordinating apparatus which uses them, have in« directly resulted from the antagonisms and competitions of organisms with one another.