CHAPTER IV: SOCIAL STRUCTURES.

§ 228. In societies, as in living bodies, increase of mass is habitually accompanied by increase of structure. Along with that integration which is the primary trait of evolution, both exhibit in high degrees 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 an extensive mass, involved arrangements are required. So, too, is it with societies. As we progress from small groups to larger; from simple groups to compound groups; from compound groups to doubly compound ones; the unlikenesses of parts increase. The social aggregate, homogeneous when minute, habitually gains in heterogeneity along with each increment of growth; and to reach great size must acquire great complexity. Let us glance at the leading stages.

Naturally in a state like that of the Cayaguas or Wood-Indians of South America, so little social that “one family Edition: current; Page: [472] lives at a distance from another,” social organization is impossible; and even where there is some slight association of families, organization does not arise while they are few and wandering. Groups of Esquimaux, 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 permanent 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 activities), this is a general rule. The headless clusters, wholly ungoverned, 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 division between regulative and operative parts. In the lowest tribes this is rudely represented only by the contrast in status between the sexes: the men, having unchecked control, carry on such external activities as the tribe shows us, chiefly in war; while the women are made drudges who perform the less skilled parts of the process of sustentation. But that tribal growth, and establishment of chieftainship, which gives military superiority, presently causes enlargement of the operative part by adding captives to it. This begins unobtrusively. While in battle the men are killed, and often afterwards eaten, the non-combatants are enslaved. Patagonians, for example, makes 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 operative part clearly marked off Edition: current; Page: [473] from the regulative part. Among the Chinooks, “slaves do all the laborious work.” We read that the Beluchi, avoiding the hard labour of cultivation, impose it on the Jutts, the ancient inhabitants whom they have subjugated. Beecham says it is usual on the Gold Coast to make the slaves clear the ground for cultivation. And among the Felatahs “slaves are numerous: the males are employed in weaving, collecting wood or grass, or on any other kind of work; some of the women are engaged in spinning . . . in preparing the yarn for the loom, others in pounding and grinding corn, etc.”

Along with that increase of mass caused by union of primary social aggregates into a secondary one, a further unlikeness of parts arises. 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 maintaining its supremacy, develops more highly its military character: thus becoming unlike the others.

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 clusters of clusters, ending from time to time in coalescence. When this happens there results still greater complexity in the governing agency, with its king, local rulers, and petty chiefs; and at the same time, there arise more marked divisions of classes—military, priestly, slave, etc. Clearly, then, complication of structure accompanies increase of mass.

§ 229. This increase of heterogeneity, which in both classes of aggregates goes along with growth, presents another trait in common. Beyond unlikenesses of parts due to development of the co-ordinating agencies, there presently follow unlikenesses among the agencies co-ordinated—the Edition: current; Page: [474] organs of alimentation, etc., in the one case, and the industrial structures 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 aggregates, each component is at first similar to the other components; but in the course of evolution dissimilarities arise and become more and more decided. Among the Cœlenterata the stages are clearly indicated. From the sides of a common hydra, bud out young ones which, when fully developed, separate from their 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 differently-conditioned members become different, while assuming different functions. It is thus with the minor social groups combined into a major social group. Each tribe originally had within itself such feebly-marked industrial divisions as sufficed for its low kind of life; and these were like those of each other tribe. But union facilitates exchange of commodities; and if, as mostly happens, the component tribes severally occupy localities favourable to unlike kinds of production, unlike occupations are initiated, and there result unlikenesses of industrial structures. Even between tribes not united, as those of Australia, barter of products furnished by their respective habitats goes on so long as war does not hinder. And evidently when 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 dependence becomes Edition: current; Page: [475] possible; and along with growing mutual dependence the parts grow unlike.

§ 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 primarily contrasted, changes which make unlike divisions of them; then within each of these unlike divisions, minor unlikenesses; and so on continually.

The successive stages in the development of a vertebrate column, illustrate this law in animals. At the outset an elongated depression of the blastoderm, called the “primitive groove,” represents the entire cerebro-spinal axis: as yet there are no marks of vertebræ, nor even a contrast between the part which is to become head and the part 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 forward, simultaneously acquires three dilatations indicating the contained nervous centres; while the segmentation of the spinal column, spreading to its ends, produces an almost-uniform series of “proto-vertebræ.” At first these proto-vertebræ not only differ very little from one another, but each is relatively simple—a quadrate mass. Gradually this almost-uniform series falls into unlike divisions—the cervical group, the dorsal group, the lumbar group; and while the series of vertebræ is thus becoming specialized in its different regions, each vertebra is changing from that general form which it at Edition: current; Page: [476] first had in common with the rest, to the more special form eventually distinguishing it from the rest. Throughout the embryo there are, at the same time, going on kindred processes; which, first making each large part unlike all other large parts, then make the parts of that part unlike one another. During social evolution analogous metamorphoses may everywhere be traced. The rise of the structure exercising religious control will serve as an example. In simple tribes, and in clusters of tribes during their early stages of aggregation, we find men who are at once sorcerers, priests, diviners, exorcists, doctors,—men who deal with supposed supernatural beings in all the various possible ways: propitiating them, seeking knowledge and aid from them, commanding them, subduing them. Along with advance in social integration, there come both differences of function and differences of rank. In Tanna “there are rain-makers . . . and a host of other ‘sacred men;’ ” in Fiji there are not only priests, but seers; among the Sandwich Islanders there are diviners as well as priests; among the New Zealanders, Thomson distinguishes between priests and sorcerers; and among the Kaffirs, besides diviners and rain-makers, there are two classes of doctors who respectively rely on supernatural and on natural agents in curing their patients. More advanced societies, as those of ancient America, show us still greater multiformity of this once-uniform group. In Mexico, for example, the medical class, descending from a class of sorcerers who dealt antagonistically with the supernatural agents supposed to cause disease, were distinct from the priests, whose dealings with supernatural agents were propitiatory. Further, the sacerdotal class included several kinds, dividing the religious offices among them—sacrificers, diviners, singers, composers of hymns, instructors of youth; and then there were also gradations of rank in each. This progress from general to special in priesthoods, has, in the higher nations, led to such marked distinctions that the original kinships are Edition: current; Page: [477] forgotten. The priest-astrologers of ancient races were initiators of the scientific class, now variously specialized; from the priest-doctors of old have come the medical class with its chief division and minor divisions; while within the clerical class proper, have arisen not only various ranks from Pope down to acolyte, but various kinds of functionaries—dean, priest, deacon, chorister, as well as others classed as curates and chaplains. Similarly if we trace the genesis of any industrial structure; as that which from primitive blacksmiths who smelt their own iron as well as make implements from it, brings us to our iron-manufacturing districts, where preparation of the metal is separated into smelting, refining, puddling, rolling, and where turning this metal into implements is divided into various businesses.

The transformation here illustrated, is, indeed, an aspect of that transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous which everywhere characterizes evolution; but the truth to be noted is that it characterizes the evolution of individual organisms and of social organisms in especially high degrees.

§ 231. Closer study of the facts shows us another striking parallelism. Organs in animals and organs in societies have internal arrangements framed on the same principle.

Differing from one another as the viscera of a living creature do in many respects, they have several traits in common. Each viscus contains appliances for conveying nutriment to its parts, for bringing it materials on which to operate, for carrying away the product, for draining off waste matters; as also for regulating its activity. Though liver and kidneys are unlike in their general appearances and minute structures, as well as in the offices they fulfil, the one as much as the other has a system of arteries, a system of veins, a system of lymphatics—has branched channels through which its excretions escape, and nerves Edition: current; Page: [478] for exciting and checking it. In large measure the like is true of those higher organs which, instead of elaborating and purifying and distributing the blood, aid the general life by carrying on external actions—the nervous and muscular organs. These, too, have their ducts for bringing prepared materials, ducts for drafting off vitiated materials, ducts for carrying away effete matters; as also their controlling nerve-cells and fibres. So that, along with the many marked differences of structure, there are these marked communities of structure.

It is the same in a society. The clustered citizens forming an organ which produces some commodity for national use, or which otherwise satisfies national wants, has within it subservient structures substantially like those of each other organ carrying on each other function. Be it a cotton-weaving district or a district where cutlery is made, it has a set of agencies which bring the raw material, and a set of agencies which collect and send away the manufactured articles; it has an apparatus of major and minor channels through which the necessaries of life are drafted out of the general stocks circulating through the kingdom, and brought home to the local workers and those who direct them; it has appliances, postal and other, for bringing those impulses by which the industry of the place is excited or checked; it has local controlling powers, political and ecclesiastical, by which order is maintained and healthful action furthered. So, too, when, from a district which secretes certain goods, we turn to a sea-port which absorbs and sends out goods, we find the distributing and restraining agencies are mostly the same. Even where the social organ, instead of carrying on a material activity, has, like a university, the office of preparing certain classes of units for social functions of particular kinds, this general type of structure is repeated: the appliances for local sustentation and regulation, differing in some respects, are similar in essentials—there are like classes of distributors, like classes Edition: current; Page: [479] for civil control, and a specially-developed class for ecclesiastical control.

On observing that this community of structure among social organs, like the community of structure among organs in a living body, necessarily accompanies mutual dependence, we shall see even more clearly than hitherto, how great is the likeness of nature between individual organization and social organization.

§ 232. One more structural analogy must be named. The formation of organs in a living body proceeds in ways which we may distinguish as primary, secondary, and tertiary; and, paralleling them, there are primary, secondary, and tertiary ways in which social organs are formed. We will look at each of the three parallelisms by itself.

In animals of low types, bile is secreted, not by a liver, but by separate cells imbedded in the wall of the intestine at one part. These cells individually perform their function of separating certain matters from the blood, and individually pour out what they separate. No organ, strictly so-called, exists; but only a number of units not yet aggregated into an organ. This is analogous to the incipient form of an industrial structure in a society. At first each worker carries on his occupation alone, and himself disposes of the product to consumers. The arrangement still extant in our villages, where the cobbler at his own fireside makes and sells boots, and where the blacksmith single-handed does what iron-work is needed by his neighbours, exemplifies the primitive type of every producing structure. Among savages slight differentiations arise from individual aptitudes. Even of the degraded Fuegians, Fitzroy tells us that “one becomes an adept with the spear; another with the sling; another with a bow and arrows.” As like differences of skill among members of primitive tribes, cause some to become makers of special things, it results that necessarily the industrial organ begins as a Edition: current; Page: [480] social unit. Where, as among the Shasta Indians of California, arrow-making is a distinct profession, it is clear that manipulative superiority being the cause of the differentiation, the worker is at first single. And during subsequent periods of growth, even in small settled communities, this type continues. The statement that among the Coast Negroes, “the most ingenious man in the village is usually the blacksmith, joiner, architect, and weaver,” while it shows us artizan-functions in an undifferentiated stage, also shows us how completely individual is the artizan-structure: the implication being that as the society grows, it is by the addition of more such individuals, severally carrying on their occupations independently, that the additional demand is met.

By two simultaneous changes, an incipient secreting organ in an animal reaches that higher structure with which our next comparison may be made. The cells pass from a scattered cluster into a compact cluster; and they severally become compound. In place of a single cell elaborating and emitting its special product, we now have a small elongated sac containing a family of cells; and this, through an opening at one end, gives exit to their products. At the same time there is formed an integrated group of such follicles, each containing secreting units and having its separate orifice of discharge. To this type of individual organ, we find, in semi-civilized societies, a type of social organ closely corresponding. In one of these settled and growing communities, the demands upon individual workers, now more specialized in their occupations, have become unceasing; and each worker, occasionally pressed by work, makes helpers of his children. This practice, beginning incidentally, establishes itself; and eventually it grows into an imperative custom that each man shall bring up his boys to his own trade. Illustrations of this stage are numerous. Skilled occupations, “like every other calling and office in Peru, always descended from father to son. Edition: current; Page: [481] The division of castes, in this particular, was as precise as that which existed in Egypt or Hindostan.” In Mexico, too, “the sons in general learned the trades of their fathers, and embraced their professions.” The like was true of the industrial structures of European nations in early times. By the Theodosian code, a Roman youth “was compelled to follow the employment of his father . . . and the suitor who sought the hand of the daughter could only obtain his bride by becoming wedded to the calling of her family.” In mediæval France handicrafts were inherited; and the old English periods were characterized by a like usage. Branching of the family through generations into a number of kindred families carrying on the same occupation, produced the germ of the guild; and the related families who monopolized each industry formed a cluster habitually occupying the same quarter. Hence the still extant names of many streets in English towns—“Fellmonger, Horsemonger, and Fleshmonger, Shoewright and Shieldwright, Turner and Salter Streets:” a segregation like that which still persists in Oriental bazaars. And now, on observing how one of these industrial quarters was composed of many allied families, each containing sons working under direction of a father, who while sharing in the work sold the produce, and who, if the family and business were large, became mainly a channel taking in raw material and giving out the manufactured article, we see that there existed an analogy to the kind of glandular organ described above, which consists of a number of adjacent cell-containing follicles having separate mouths.

A third stage of the analogy may be traced. Along with that increase of a glandular organ necessitated by the more active functions of a more developed animal, there goes a change of structure consequent on augmentation of bulk. If the follicles multiply while their ducts have all to be brought to one spot, it results that their orifices, increasingly numerous, occupy a larger area of the wall of the Edition: current; Page: [482] cavity which receives the discharge; and if lateral extension of this area is negatived by the functional requirements, it results that the needful area is gained by formation of a cæcum. Further need of the same kind leads to secondary cæca diverging from this main cæcum; which hence becomes, in part, a duct. Thus is at length evolved a large viscus, such as a liver, having a single main duct with ramifying branches running throughout its mass. Now we rise from the above-described kind of industrial organ by parallel stages to a higher kind. There is no sudden leap from the household-type to the factory-type, but a gradual transition. The first step is shown us in those rules of trade-guilds under which, to the members of the family, might be added an apprentice (possibly at first a relation), who, as Brentano says, “became a member of the family of his master, who instructed him in his trade, and who, like a father, had to watch over his morals, as well as his work:” practically, an adopted son. This modification having been established, there followed the employing of apprentices who had changed into journeymen. With development of this modified household-group, the master grew into a seller of goods made, not by his own family only, but by others; and, as his business enlarged, necessarily ceased to be a worker, and became wholly a distributor—a channel through which went out the products, not of a few sons, but of many unrelated artizans. This led the way to establishments in which the employed far outnumbered the members of the family; until at length, with the use of mechanical power, came the factory: a series of rooms, each containing a crowd of producing units, and sending its tributary stream of product to join other streams before reaching the single place of exit. Finally, in greatly-developed industrial organs, we see many factories clustered in the same town, and others in adjacent towns; to and from which, along branching roads, come the raw materials and go the bales of cloth, calico, etc.

There are instances in which a new industry passes through Edition: current; Page: [483] these stages in the course of a few generations; as happened with the stocking-manufacture. In the Midland counties, fifty years ago, the rattle and burr of a solitary stocking-frame came from a road-side cottage every here and there; the single worker made and sold his product. Presently arose work-shops in which several such looms might be heard going: there was the father and his sons, with perhaps a journeyman. At length grew up the large building containing many looms driven by a steam-engine; and finally many such large buildings in the same town.

§ 233. These structural analogies reach a final phase that is still more striking. In both cases there is a contrast between the original mode of development and a substituted later mode.

In the general course of organic evolution from low types to high, there have been passed through by insensible modifications all the stages above described; but now, in the individual evolution of an organism of high type, these stages are greatly abridged, and an organ is produced by a comparatively direct process. Thus the liver of a mammalian embryo is formed by the accumulation of numerous cells, which presently grow into a mass projecting from the wall of the intestine; while simultaneously there dips down into it a cæcum from the intestine. Transformation of this cæcum into the hepatic duct takes place at the same time that within the mass of cells there arise minor ducts, connected with this main duct; and there meanwhile go on other changes which, during evolution of the organ through successively higher types, came one after another. In the formation of industrial organs the like happens. Now that the factory system is well-established—now that it has become ingrained in the social constitution, we see direct assumptions of it in all industries for which its fitness has been shown. If at one place the discovery of ore prompts the setting up of ironworks, or at another a special kind of water facilitates brewing, Edition: current; Page: [484] there is no passing through the early stages of single worker, family, clustered families, and so on; but there is a sudden drafting of materials and men to the spot, followed by formation of a producing structure on the advanced type. Nay, not one large establishment only is thus evolved after the direct manner, but a cluster of large establishments. At Barrow-in-Furness we see a town with its ironworks, its importing and exporting businesses, its extensive docks and means of communication, all in the space of a few years framed after that type which it has taken centuries to develop through successive modifications.

An allied but even more marked change in the evolutionary process, is also common to both cases. Just as in the embryo of a high animal, various organs have their important parts laid down out of their original order, in anticipation, as it were; so, with the body at large, it happens that entire organs which, during the serial genesis of the type, came comparatively late, come in the evolving individual comparatively soon. This, which Prof. Haeckel has called heterochrony, is shown us in the early marking out of the brain in a mammalian embryo, though in the lowest vertebrate animal, no brain ever exists; or, again, in the segmentation of the spinal column before any alimentary system is formed, though, in a proto-vertebrate, even when its alimentary system is completed, there are but feeble signs of segmentation. The analogous change of order in social evolution, is shown us by new societies which inherit the confirmed habits of old ones. Instance the United States, where a town in the far west, laid down in its streets and plots, has its hotel, church, post-office, built while there are but few houses; and where a railway is run through the wilderness in anticipation of settlements. Or instance Australia, where a few years after the huts of gold-diggers begin to cluster round new mines, there is established a printing-office and journal; though, in the mother-country, centuries passed before a town of like size developed a like agency.