ferent 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 in- tervals in the provincial towns. Ancient American socie- ties 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 fore- shadowing 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 de- mand. Our own history shows how such slow periodic re- pletions 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 inter- vals 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 circu- lation 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 be- cotoes 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 compo- nents in the currents continually increases. More- over, 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 exten- sions 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 hetero- geneous 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 ad- vanced 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 consump- tion. 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 restric- tions 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 after- wards 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, allow- ing 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 vio- lent 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 propor- tion 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 tissue- formation (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 dis- charged, 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 dis- tricts augmented supplies of all kinds — men, money, con- sumable, 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 dis- creteness of a social organism. I may name, first, a differ- ence 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 work- ing 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 body- politic 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 appli- ances for transfer. But when the division of labour, physio- logical 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 distri- buting system has to keep pace with the other develop- ments. 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 increas- ingly specialized in their functions, increasingly efficient therefore, and combining to produce an increased amount of general life, there goes an increased need for large distribu- tions 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 elabo- rate 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 circu- lating stock of consumable matters, are enabled to appro- priate, 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 eidst- ences, and the inner dealings with materials required for sustentation, its structure becomes adapted to the require- ments 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 func- tions 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 struc- tures carrying on outer actions is determined by the charac- ters 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 surround- ing 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 540 THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.
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 herb- ivorous 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 nerv- ous 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.
A parallel truth is disclosed on watching how there evolves the regulating system of a political aggregate, and how there are developed those appliances for offence and defence put in action by it. Everywhere the wars between societies originate governmental structures, and are causes of all such improvements in those structures as increase the efficiency of corporate action against environing so- gieties. Observe, first, the conditions under which there 4 is an absence of this agency furthering combination; and then observe the conditions nnder which this agency begins to show itself.
Where food is scarce^ diCFusion great, and co-operation consequently hindered, there is no established chieftainship. The Fuegians, the Cayagaas or Wood-Indians of South America, the Jungle-Veddahs of Ceylon, the Bushmen of South Africa, are instances. They do not form unions for defence, and have no recognized authorities: personal pre- dominance of a temporary kind, such as tends to arise in every group, being the only approach to it. So of the Esqui- maux, necessarily much scattered, Heame says — " they live in a state of perfect freedom; no one apparently claiming the superiority over, or acknowledging the least subordination to, another: '' joined with which fact stands the fact that they do not know what war means. And in like manner where barren- ness of territory negatives anything more than occasional as- semblings, as with the Chippewayans, there is nothing like chieftainship beyond the effect due to character; and this is very small. In other cases adequate concentration is negatived by the natures of the people. They are too little social or too little subordinate. It is thus with the Abors, Hill-tribes of India, who, '^ as they themselves say, are like tigers, two cannot dwell in one den,^' and who have their houses '' scattered singly or in groups of two and three.*^ It is thus, too, as before pointed out (§ 35), with the Mantras of the Malay peninsula, who " separate if they dispute." Here both the diffusion and the disposition causing the dif- fusion, check the evolution of a political head. But it is not only in cases like these that governmental co-ordi- nation is absent. It is absent also among tribes that are settled and considerably more advanced, provided they are not given to war. Among such Papuans as the Araf uras and the people of Dalrymple Island, there are no chiefs: the people living " in such peace and brotherly love with one another " that they need no control but the de- 5^2 TH1£ INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOaT.
cisionB of their elders. The Tcdas, too, wholly without military organization^ and described as peaceable, mild, friendly, have no political headships. So again is it with the placable Bodo and fihimals; described as having many amiable qualities — ^being honesty truthful, entirely free from revenge, cruelty, and violence — and whose headmen have authorities scarcely more than nominal. To which, as similarly significant, I nuiy add that the Lepchas, referred to by Dr. Hooker as " really amiable,^' are said by Campbell to be " wonderfully honest,'' " singularly forgiving of injuries,'' '^making mutual amends and concessions"; while at the same time " they are averse to soldiering, and cannot be induced to enlist in our army," and are so little subordinate that they fly to the jungle and live on roots rather than submit to injustice.
Now observe how the headless state is changed and poli- tical co-ordination initiated. Edwards says the Caribs in time of peace admitted no supremacy: only their old men had a kind of ill-defined authority; but, he adds, ''in war, ex- perience had taught them that subordination was as requi- site as courage." So, too, describing the confederation of tribes among the Caribs, Humboldt says they are " war- like hordes who see no advantage in the ties of society but for common defence." Of the Creeks, whose sub- ordination to authority is but slight, Swan tells us ''it would be diflScult, if not impossible, to impress on the community at large the necessity of any social compact, that should be binding upon it longer than common danger threatened them." Again Bonwick says — " Chieftains un- doubtedly did exist among the Tasmanians, though they were neither hereditary nor elective. They were, never- theless, recognized, especially in time of war, as leaders of the tribes. ^ ^ -n- After the cessation of hostilities they re- tired to the quietude of every-day forest life." In other cases we find a permanent change produced. Kotzebue says the Kamtschadales "acknowledge no chief"; while THB RBOHLATIKQ SYSTEM. 543 Grieve says that the only authority waa that of '' the old men^ or those who were remarkable for their brayery/' And then it is remarked that these statements refer to the time before the Russian conquest — before there had been combined opposition to an enemy. This develop* mont of simple headship in a tribe by conflict with other tribes^ we find advancing into compound headship along with larger antagonisms of race with race. Of the Pata* gonians Falkner tells us that though the tribes ''are at continual variance among themselves^ yet they often join together against the Spaniards.^' It was the same with the North American Indians. The confederacy of the six na- tions^ which held together under a settled system of co- operation, resulted from war with the English. Stages in the genesis of this compound controlling agency by con* flict with other societies are shown us by the Polynesians. In Samoa eight or ten village-communities^ which are in other respects independent^ *' unite by common consent, and form a district or state for mutual pro- tection. * * 4t When war is threatened by another district, no single village can act aloue; « « « Some of these districts or states have their king; others cannot agree on the choice of one; « « * there is no such thing as a king, or even a district whose power extends all over the group. Yet in case of war, Uiey sometimes combine in twos or threes."
Early histories of the civilized similarly show us how union of smaller social aggfregates for offensive or defensive pur- poses^ necessitating co-ordination of their actions^ tends to initiate a central co-ordinating agency. Instance the Hebrew monarchy: the previously-separate tribes of Is- raelites became a nation subordinate to Saul and David, during wars with the Moabites, Ammonites^ Edomites and Philistines. Instance the case of the Greeks: the growth of the Athenian hegemony into mastership, and the organi- zation, political and naval, which accompanied it, was a con- comitant of the continued activity of the confederacy ti gainst external enemies. Instance in later times the development 544 THB INDUCTIONS OF BOCIOLOOT.
ot governments among Teutonic peoples. At the begin- ning of the Christian era there were only chieftainships of separate tribes; and, during wars, temporary greater chief- tainships of.allied forces. Between the first and the fifth centuries the federations made to resist or invade the Roman empire did not evolve permanent heads; but in the fifth century the prolonged military activities of these federations ended in the military leaders becoming kings over consolidated states.
As this difEerentiation by which there arises first a tem- porary and then a permanent military head, who passes in- sensibly into political head, is initiated by conflict with adjacent societies, it naturally happens that his political power increases as military activity continues. Other things equal, corporate action of a society in war is effective in proportion as obedience to a commander is profound; and obviously if success, thus going along with submission to control, leads to the conquest or extermination of peoples who are less subordinate, it follows that the subordination causing success in wars, and the consequent persistence in wars, tend to go together and to further one another. Every- where, providing extreme difiusion does not prevent, we find this union of predatory activity with submission to despotic rule. Asia shows it in the Kirghiz tribes, who are slave- hunters and robbers, and of whose manaps, once elective but now hereditary, Michael says — ''The word manap lite- rally means a tyrant, in the ancient Greek sense. It was at first the proper name of an elder distinguished for his cruelty and unrelenting spirit; from him the appellation became general to all the Kirghiz rulers.*' Africa shows it iTi the cannibal Niamniams, whose king is unlimited lord