CHAPTER V: SOCIAL FUNCTIONS.

§ 234. Changes of structures cannot occur without changes of functions. Much that was said in the last chapter might, therefore, be said here with substituted terms. Indeed, as in societies many changes of structure are more indicated by changes of function than directly seen, it may be said that these last have been already described by implication.

There are, however, certain functional traits not manifestly implied by traits of structure. To these a few pages must be devoted.

§ 235. If organization consists in such a construction of the whole that its parts can carry on mutually-dependent actions, then in proportion as organization is high there must go a dependence of each part upon the rest so great that separation is fatal; and conversely. This truth is equally well shown in the individual organism and in the social organism.

The lowest animal-aggregates are so constituted that each portion, similar to every other in appearance, carries on similar actions; and here spontaneous or artificial separation interferes scarcely at all with the life of either separated portion. When the faintly-differentiated speck of protoplasm forming a Rhizopod is accidently divided, each division Edition: current; Page: [486] goes on as before. So, too, is it with those aggregates of the second order in which the components remain substantially alike. The ciliated monads clothing the horny fibres of a living sponge, need one another’s aid so little that, when the sponge is cut in two, each half carries on its processes without interruption. Even where some unlikeness has arisen among the units, as in the familiar polype, the perturbation caused by division is but temporary: the two or more portions resulting, need only a little time for the units to rearrange themselves into fit forms before resuming their ordinary simple actions. The like happens for the like reason with the lowest social aggregates. A headless wandering group of primitive men divides without any inconvenience. Each man, at once warrior, hunter, and maker of his own weapons, hut, etc., with a squaw who has in every case the like drudgeries to carry on, needs concert with his fellows only in war and to some extent in the chase; and, except for fighting, concert with half the tribe is as good as concert with the whole. Even where the slight differentiation implied by chieftainship exists, little inconvenience results from voluntary or enforced separation. Either before or after a part of the tribe migrates, some man becomes head, and such low social life as is possible recommences.

With highly-organized aggregates of either kind it is very different. We cannot cut a mammal in two without causing immediate death. Twisting off the head of a fowl is fatal. Not even a reptile, though it may survive the loss of its tail, can live when its body is divided. And among annulose creatures it similarly happens that though in some inferior genera, bisection does not kill either half, it kills both in an insect, an arachnid, or a crustacean. If in high societies the effect of mutilation is less than in high animals, still it is great. Middlesex separated from its surroundings would in a few days have all its social processes stopped by lack of supplies. Cut off the cotton-district from Edition: current; Page: [487] Liverpool and other ports, and there would come arrest of its industry followed by mortality of its people. Let a division be made between the coal-mining populations and adjacent populations which smelt metals or make broadcloth by machinery, and both, forthwith dying socially by arrest of their actions, would begin to die individually. Though when a civilized society is so divided that part of it is left without a central controlling agency, it may presently evolve one; yet there is meanwhile much risk of dissolution, and before re-organization is efficient, a long period of disorder and weakness must be passed through.

So that the consensus of functions becomes closer as evolution advances. In low aggregates, both individual and social, the actions of the parts are but litle dependent on one another; whereas in developed aggregates of both kinds, that combination of actions which constitutes the life of the whole, makes possible the component actions which constitute the lives of the parts.

§ 236. Another corollary, manifest a priori and proved a posteriori, must be named. Where parts are little differentiated, they can readily perform one another’s functions; but where much differentiated they can perform one another’s functions very imperfectly, or not at all.

Again the common polype furnishes a clear illustration. One of these sack-shaped creatures admits of being turned inside out, so that the skin becomes stomach and the stomach becomes skin: each thereupon beginning to do the work of the other. The higher we rise in the scale of organization the less practicable do we find such exchanges. Still, to some extent, substitutions of functions remain possible in highly developed creatures. Even in man the skin shows a trace of its original absorptive power, now monopolized by the alimentary canal: it takes into the system certain small amounts of matter rubbed on to it. Such vicarious actions are, however, most manifest between parts Edition: current; Page: [488] having functions that are still allied. If, for instance, the bile-excreting function of the liver is impeded, other excretory organs, the kidneys and the skin, become channels through which bile is got rid of. If a cancer in the œsophagus prevents swallowing, the arrested food, dilating the œsophagus, forms a pouch in which imperfect digestion is set up. But these small abilities of the differentiated parts to discharge one another’s duties, are not displayed where they have diverged more widely. Though mucous membrane, continuous with skin at various orifices, will, if everted, assume to a considerable extent the characters and powers of skin, yet serous membrane will not; nor can bone or muscle undertake, for any of the viscera, portions of their functions if they fail.

In social organisms, low and high, we find these relatively great and relatively small powers of substitution. Of course, where each member of the tribe repeats every other in his mode of life, there are no unlike functions to be exchanged; and where there has arisen only that small differentiation implied by the barter of weapons for other articles, between one member of the tribe skilled in weapon-making and others less skilled, the destruction of this specially-skilled member entails no great evil; since the rest can severally do for themselves that which he did for them, though not quite so well. Even in settled societies of considerable sizes, we find the like holds to a great degree. Of the ancient Mexicans, Zurita says—“Every Indian knows all handicrafts which do not require great skill or delicate instruments;” and in Peru each man “was expected to be acquainted with the various handicrafts essential to domestic comfort:” the parts of the societies were so slightly differentiated in their occupations, that assumption of one another’s occupations remained practicable. But in societies like our own, specialized industrially and otherwise in high degrees, the actions of one part which fails in its function cannot be assumed by other parts. Even the relatively-unskilled farm Edition: current; Page: [489] labourers, were they to strike, would have their duties very inadequately performed by the urban population; and our iron manufactures would be stopped if their trained artizans, refusing to work, had to be replaced by peasants or hands from cotton-factories. Still less could the higher functions, legislative, judicial, etc., be effectually performed by coalminers and navvies.

Evidently the same reason for this contrast holds in the two cases. In proportion as the units forming any part of an individual organism are limited to one kind of action, as that of absorbing, or secreting, or contracting, or conveying an impulse, and become adapted to that action, they lose adaptation to other actions; and in the social organism the discipline required for effectually discharging a special duty, causes unfitness for discharging special duties widely unlike it.

§ 237. Beyond these two chief functional analogies between individual organisms and social organisms, that when they are little evolved, division or mutilation causes small inconvenience, but when they are much evolved it causes great perturbation or death, and that in low types of either kind the parts can assume one another’s functions, but cannot in high types; sundry consequent functional analogies might be enlarged on did space permit.

There is the truth that in both kinds of organisms the vitality increases as fast as the functions become specialized. In either case, before there exist structures severally adapted for the unlike actions, these are ill-performed; and in the absence of developed appliances for furthering it, the utilization of one another’s services is but slight. But along with advance of organization, every part, more limited in its office, performs its office better; the means of exchanging benefits become greater; each aids all, and all aid each with increasing efficiency; and the total activity we call life, individual or national, augments.

Much, too, remains to be said about the parallelism between the changes by which the functions become specialized; but this, along with other parallelisms, will best be seen on following out, as we will now do, the evolution of the several great systems of organs, individual and social: considering their respective structural and functional traits together.