§ 241. The parts carrying on alimentation in a living body and the parts carrying on productive industries in the body politic, constitute, in either case, a sustaining system: sustentation is the oflSce they have in common. These parts are differentiated in conformity with certain laws which are common to individual organisms and social organisms; and of these laws the most general is that which concerns localization of their divisions.
As a typical example of this localization in vegetal organ- isms, may be named the ordinary contrast between the under- ground parts and the above-ground parts — the first absorb- ing water and mineral constituents, and the last, by the aid of light, depriving the atmospheric carbonic acid of its car- bon. That this distinction of functions is originally caused by the relations of the two parts to environing agents, is proved by the facts that if not covered with an opaque bark, the root-part, when above the surface, becomes green and decomposes carbonic &cid, while, conversely, branches bent down and imbedded in the ground develop rootlets. That is to say the unlikeness of their conditions determines this difference between the nutritive actions which these two great divisions of the plant carry on for the good of the whole. Among animals (with the exception of certain entoxoa which, being immersed in nutritive mat- 518 THS INDUCTIONS OP SOCIOLOGY.
ters^ feed themselves through their outer surfaces) the outer surfaces take no share in the function of alimentatioii. As already shown^ the primary differentiation^ establishing in the external layers a monopoly of those activities which their position makes possible^ establishes in the internal layers a monopoly of those activities by which the wwal" lowed prey is utilized. Here we have to note how the general process of utilization is divided among parts of the alimentary canal, in conformity with their respective relations to nutritive matters. The course of evolution will be roughly conceived on recalling the antithesis be- tween the uniform digestive tube with undivided function which an inferior creature possesses, and the multiform digestive apparatus, with great and small divisions of func- tion, which a bird or mammal possesses. Secured in a solid form, the food has first to be triturated; and hence tritu- rating appliances when formed, come at, or near, the begin- ning of the series of structures — teeth where they exist, or a gizzard where they do not. Crushed to pieces, the ingested substances must be further reduced before absorp- tion can begin; and their presence in an incompletely broken down state, therefore throws on a succeeding portion of the alimentary canal the daty of completing the dis- integration in a contractile sac, furnished with glands secret- ing solvent liquids. The pulp produced in this sac entails on the next part of the canal a different office. There can no longer be trituration, or dissolution of large fragments into minute shreds; and any further preparation must consist in the addition of secretions which fit the matters for absorp- tion. Preparation being now completed, there remains nothing to do but take up what is prepared — ^the arrival at a certain part of the alimentary canal in an absorbable state determines in that part the absorbing function. And similarly, though indirectly, with the localization of the great appended glands {Prin. of Bio., § 298 — ^9).
In the social organism localization of the various indns- THl 8USTAIN1NQ SYSTEM. 519 tries which jointly sustain the whole^ is detennined in an analogous manner. Primarily, the relations to different parts of the organic and inorganic environments^ usually not alike over the whole area the society covers, initiate differ- ences in the occupations catried on. And, secondarily, the nearness to districts which have had their industries thus fixed, fixes the positions of other industries which espe* cially require their products. The first of these localizations is traceable even among the semi -civilized. Jackson describes some of the Fiji Islands as famous for wooden implements, others for mats and baskets, others for pots and pigments — ^unlikenesses between the natural pro- ducts of the islands being the causes; as also in Samoa, where Turner tells us net-making is '^ confined principally to the inland villages,'^ and ascribes this to ''proximity to the raw material.^^ The slightly-advanced societies of Africa show us kindred differentiations, having kindred origins. In Lo- ango, according to Proyart, ''the sea-coasts are frequented by regular professed fishermen,'^ and there are also men who live near the sea and make salt by " evaporating sea-water over a fire.'' Here local facilities manifestly fix these occupa- tions; as they doubtless do in that Ashantee town which is devoted to pottery. The extinct societies of America had more numerous such instances. Lorenzana says — "An exten- sive commerce is carried on in this salt [saltpetre] by the Mexicans of Yxtapaluca and Yxtapalapa, which mean the places whore salt, or Yxtail, is gathered;'' and when we read in Glavig^ro of the potters of Gholula, the stone-cutters of Tenajocan, the fishers of Cuitlahuac, and the florists of Xochimilco, we cannot doubt that these several businesses grew up in places which respectively furnished natural ad- vantages for carrying them on. Of kindred evidence sup- plied by the Ancient Peruvians may be given Qarcilasso's statement that " the shoes were madoin the provinces where aloes were most abundant, for th^ were made of the leaves of a tree called maguey. The arms also were supplied by 520 TBS iBDucxiaaEi or 8oaou»T.
the pTormces where the materials for making them were most abimdant/' By showing ns the generality of the law, these instances gnre point to the eridence around a& Familiarity mnst not make ns overlook the meaning of the facts that the population fringing our shores is, by Tirtoe of its position, led into occnpations directly or indirectly mari- time— ^fishing, sailing, dup-boilding — whfle certain coast- towns are, by physical circumstances, differentiatod into places of import and export; and that the inland population, cultivating more especially this or that kind of food as soil and climate determine, has its energies turned by proximity to the raw material, here to quarrying stone or slate, here to brick-making, and in other places to raising minerals. Then, as above implied, there result the secondary localizations favoured by these. Where not drawn by natural advantages in the way of water-power, manu&ctnres in general cluster in or around regions where abundance of coal makes steam-power cheap. And if two materiab are needed, the localization is deter- mined by them jointly; as with the nail- making industry at Stourbridge and the neighbourhood, where both iron and coal are close at hand; as in Birmingham, with its multi- farious hardwares, which is similarly adjacent to the sources of these two chief raw materials; as in Manchester, which lies near the chief cotton port and on a coal region; as in Sheffield, which, besides the five streams yielding its water- power, and its adjacency to supplies of iron, coal, and char- coal, has at hand '^ the best grit in the world for grind- stones/' § 242. This localization of organs devoted to the prepa- ration of those matters which the organism, individual or social, needs for sustentation, exhibits a further common trait. The alimentary structures, responding to require- ments of another kind, differentiate and develop in a manner quite unlike that followed by the relating strnctuires.
THE SUSTAINING SYSTEM. 521 The common trait referred to is most visible where the two kinds of aggregates respectively consisted at first of similar segments^ which gradually became consolidated. Among animals the annulose type best shows us this trans- formation with all its concomitants. The segments^ or somites^ as they are called^ forming a low kind of aquatic worm, such as a Syllis, repeat one another's structures. Each has its enlargement of the alimentary canal; each its contractile dilatation of the great blood-vessel; each its portion of the double nervous cord, with ganglia when these exist; each its branches from the nervous and vascular trunks answering to those of its neighbours; each its similarly answering set of muscles; each its pair of open- ings through the body-wall; and so on throughout, even to the organs of reproduction. Externally, too, they have like locomotive appendages, like branchiee, and sometimes even like pairs of eyes {Prin. of Bio,, § 205). But when we come to the higher Annulosa, such as Crustaceans and Insects, the somites of which, much more integrated, are some of them so completely fused that their divisions are no longer traceable, we find that the alimentary organs have entirely lost their original relations to the somites. In a moth or a cockroach, the abdomen of which is still externally seg- mented, these internal parts which carry on sustentation do not, as in the annelid, repeat one another in each segment; but the crop, stomach, glands, intestines, severally extend themselves through two, three, four, or more segments. Meanwhile it is observable that the nervous centres carrying on co-ordination, though now partially unlike in the succes- sive segments, have by no means lost their original relations to the segments. Though in a moth the anterior ganglia, controlling the external activities, have become a good deal displaced and integrated; yet the ganglia of the abdominal segments, relatively small as they now are, remain in their localities.
With the industrial structures which arise in a large 522 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.
society formed by permanent consolidation of small societies^ the like happens: they extend themselves without reference to political divisions, great or little. We Kave around us a sufficiency of illustrations. Just noting the partial differen- tiations of the ag^cultural system^ here characterized by pre- dominance of cereal produce^ here by the raising of cattle, and in mountainous parts by sheep-farming— differences that have no reference to county-boundaries — ^we may note more especially how the areas devoted to this or that manu- facture are wholly unrelated to the original limits of political groups, and to whatever limits were politically established afterwards. We have an iron-secreting district occupying part of Worcestershire, part of Staffordshire, part of War- wickshire; the cotton manufacture is not restricted to Lancashire, but takes in a northern district of Derbyshire; and in the coal and iron region round Newcastle and Durham it is the same. So, too, of the smaller political divisions and the smaller parts of our industrial structures. A manu&cturing town grows without regard to parish- boundaries; which are, indeed, often traversed by the pre- mises of single establishments. On a larger scale the like ia shown us by our great city. London overruns many parishes, and its increase is not checked by the division between Middlesex and Surrey. Occasionally it is observable that even national boundaries fail to prevent this consequence of industrial localization: instance the fact named by Hallam, that "the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders along the banks of the Rhine, and into the northern pro- vinces of France.'' Meanwhile the controlling structures, however much they change in their proportions, do not thus lose their relations to the original segments. The regulating agencies of our counties continue to represent what were once independent governments. In the old English period the county was an area ruled by a comes or earl, and vary- ing in its limits with his power. According to Mr. Stubbs, '' the constitutional machinery of the shire thus represents THB 8U8TAIK1NO STSTEM. 523 either the national organization of the several divisions created by West Saxon conquest; or that of the early settlements which united in the Mercian kingdom as it advanced westwards; or the re-arrangement by the West Saxon dynasty of the whole of England on the principles already at work in its own shires/' Similarly respecting the eighty small Gaulish states which originaDy occupied the aroa of France, M. De Coulanges says — " Ni les Bomains ni les Germains, ni la f£odalit6 ni la monarchic n'ont d^truit oes unites vivaoes;'' which up to the time of the Revolution remained substantially, as "provinces*' and "pays/* the minor local governments.
§ 248. This community of traits between the development of sustaining structures in an individual organism and in a social organism, requires to be expressed apart from detail before its full meaning can be seen.
What is the law of evolution in the digestive system of an animal as most generally stated? That the entire ali- mentary canal becomes adapted in structure and function to the matters, animal or vegetal, brought in contact with its interior; and, further, that its several parts acquire fitnesses for dealing with these matters at successive stages of their preparation: that is, the foreign substances serving for sus- tentation, on which its interior operates, detei*mine the general and special characters of that interior. And what, stated in terms similarly general, is the law of evolution of the industrial system in a society? That as a whole it takes on activities and correlative structures, determined by the minerals, animals, and vegetals, with which its working population are in contact; and that industrial specializa- tions in parts of its population, are determined by differ- ences, organic or inorganic, in the local products those parts have to deal with.
The truth that while the material environment, yielding in various degrees and with various advantages consumable bli THE INDUCriONB OF 8O0IOIX)0T.
things^ thus determinee the industrial differentiationBj I have, iu passings joined with a brief indication of the trath that differentiations of the regulative or governmental stmctures are not thus determined. The significance of this antithesis remains to be pointed ont when the evolution of these governmental stmotnres ia traced.
CHAPTER Vin.
THfi DISTRIBUTINQ SYSTEM.
§ 244. Ih the last chapter but one, where the relations between the three great systems of organs were briefly described^ it was pointed out that neither in an animal nor in a society can development of the sustaining system or of the regulating system go on without concomitant de- velopment of the distributing system. Transition from a partially-coherent group of tribes that are severally self- sufficing^ to a completely-coherent group in which indus- trial differences have arisen, cannot take place without the rise of an agency for transferring commodities; any more than a cluster of similar polypites can be changed into such a combination as we seeiaDiphyee, without some modification facilitating conveyance of nutriment from its feeding mem- bers to its swimming members. A mediaeval society formed of slightly-subordinated feudal states, each having besides its local lord its several kinds of workers and traders within itself, just as an annelid is formed of segments, each having besides its ganglia its own appendages, branchi« and simple alimentary tract; can no more pass into an integrated society having localized industries, without the development of roads and commercial classes, than the annelid can evolve into a crustacean or insect, characterized by numerous unlikenesses of parts and actions, without the growth of a centralized vascular system.
Here, then, we have to observe the implied parallelisms 526 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGT.
between the distribatiug systems, indiyidual and social, in their succesBive stages.
§ 245. Protos&oa of the rhizopod type are withoat channels of communication from part to part. The close proximity of the parts, the likeness of function among the parts, and their great variability of relative position, make a distributing system alike useless and impracticable. Even such animal aggregates as Myxomycetee, which are of considerable extent but are homogeneous, have no permeable lines for the dis- tribution of nutriment. So is it with low societies. Tribes that are small, migratory, and without division of labour, by each of these characters negative the formation of channels for intercourse. A group of a dozen or two, have among themselves such small and indefinite communications as scarcely to make tracks between huts; when migratory, as they mostly are, the beaten paths they begin forming at each temporary abode are quickly overgrown; and even where they are settled, if they are scattered and have no unlikenesses of occupations, the movements of individuals from place to place are so trifling as scarcely to leave traces.
Compound aggregates of which the parts, differently re- lated 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 Bech- uanas 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, accord- ing 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 occa- sional 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 open- mouthed 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 succes- sive kings through the forests-doubtless replacing the pri- mitive 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 commu- nication. 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 cen- tury, 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 macadamiza- tion, an improvement belonging to our own century, begin- ning 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 termi- nate 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 struc- tured; and the re-divergent ones, becoming less finished as they ramify, everywhere end in lacunce — unfenced, un- metalled 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 con- sumption 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 prin- ciple, 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 in- definite ways: the movements are feeble, and do not con- stitute 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 move- ment 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 dif-