CHAPTER VII: THE SUSTAINING SYSTEM.

§ 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 office 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 organisms, may be named the ordinary contrast between the underground parts and the above-ground parts—the first absorbing water and mineral constituents, and the last, by the aid of light, depriving the atmospheric carbonic acid of its carbon. 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 acid, while, conversely, branches bent down and imbedded in the ground develop rootlets. That is to say, 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 entozoa which, being immersed in nutritive matters, Edition: current; Page: [499] feed themselves through their outer surfaces) the outer surfaces take no share in alimentation. 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 swallowed prey is utilized. Here we have to note how the general process of utilization is divided among the 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 between the uniform digestive tube with undivided function which an inferior creature possesses, and the multiform digestive apparatus, with great and small divisions of function, which a bird or mammal possesses. Secured in a solid form, the food has first to be triturated; and hence triturating appliances when formed, come at, or near, the beginning 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 absorption can begin; and their presence in an incompletely broken down state, therefore throws on a succeeding portion of the alimentary canal the duty of completing the disintegration in a contractile sac, furnished with glands secreting 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 absorption. 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 Biol., § 298-9).

In the social organism localization of the various industries Edition: current; Page: [500] which jointly sustain the whole, is determined 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 differences in the occupations carried on. And, secondarily, the nearness to districts which have had their industries thus fixed, fixes the positions of other industries which especially 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 products of the islands being the causes; as also in Samoa, where Turner says 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 Loango, “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 occupations; 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 extensive commerce is carried on in this salt [saltpetre] by the Mexicans of Yxtapaluca and Yxtapalapa, which mean the places where salt, or Yxtatl, is gathered;” and when we read in Clavigero of the potters of Cholula, 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 advantages for carrying them on. So of the Ancient Peruvians we are told that “the shoes were made in the provinces where aloes were most abundant, for they were made of the leaves of a tree called maguey. The arms also were supplied by the provinces where the materials for Edition: current; Page: [501] making them were most abundant.” By showing us the generality of the law, these instances give point to the evidence around us. Familiarity must not make us overlook the meaning of the facts that the population fringing our shores is, by virtue of its position, led into occupations directly or indirectly maritime—fishing, sailing ship-building—while certain coast-towns are, by physical circumstances, differentiated into places of import and export; and that the inland population, mostly raising this or that kind of food as soil and climate determine, has its energies otherwise turned by proximity to the raw material, here to quarrying stone or slate, here to brick-making, and in other places 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, manufactures in general cluster in or around regions where abundance of coal makes steam-power cheap. And if two materials are needed, the localization is determined by them jointly; as with the nail-making industry at Stourbridge, where both iron and coal are close at hand; as in Birmingham, with its multifarious 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 charcoal, has at hand “the best grit in the world for grindstones.”

§ 242. This localization of organs devoted to the preparation of those matters which the organism, individual or social, needs for sustentation, exhibits a further common trait. Alimentary structures differentiate and develop in a manner quite unlike that followed by regulating structures.

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. Edition: current; Page: [502] Among animals the annulose type best shows us this transformation with all its concomitants. The segments, or somites, as they are called, forming a low type 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 openings through the body-wall; and so on throughout, even to the organs of reproduction. Externally, too, they have like locomotive appendages, like branchiæ, and sometimes even like pairs of eyes (Prin. of Biol., § 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 segmented, 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 successive segments, have not 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, now relatively small, remain in their localities.

With the industrial structures which arise in a large society formed by permanent consolidation of small societies, the like happens: they extend themselves without reference to political divisions, great or little. We have around us a sufficiency of illustrations. Just noting the partial differentiations Edition: current; Page: [503] of the agricultural system, here characterized by predominance of cereal produce, here by the raising of cattle, and in mountainous parts by sheep-farming—differences which have no reference to county-boundaries—we may note more especially how the areas devoted to this or that manufacture, 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 Warwickshire. 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 manufacturing town grows without regard to parish-boundaries; which are, indeed, often traversed by the premises of single establishments. On a larger scale the like is 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 provinces of France.” Meanwhile the controlling structures, however much they change their proportions, do not thus lose their relations to the original segments. The regulating agencies of our countries continue to represent what were once independent governments. In the old English period the county was an area ruled by a comes or earl. According to Bp. Stubbs, “the constitutional machinery of the shire thus represents either the national organization of the several divisions created by West Saxon conquests; 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 Edition: current; Page: [504] already at work in its own shires.” Similarly respecting the eighty small Gaulish states which originally occupied the area of France, M. Fustel de Coulanges says—“Ni les Romains ni les Germains, ni la féodalité ni la monarchie n’ont détruit ces unités vivaces;” which up to the time of the Revolution remained substantially, as “provinces” and “pays,” the minor local governments.

§ 243. This community of traits between the developments 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 course of evolution in the digestive system of an animal as most generally stated? That the entire alimentary 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 sustentation, on which its interior operates, determine the general and special characters of that interior. And what, stated in terms similarly general, is the course of evolution in the industrial system of a society? That as a whole it takes on activities and correlative structures, determined by the minerals, animals, and vegetals, with which its workers are in contact; and that industrial specializations in parts of its population, are determined by differences, 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 things, thus determines the industrial differentiations, I have, in passing, joined with a brief indication of the truth that differentiations of the regulative or governmental structures are not thus determined. The significance of this antithesis remains to be pointed out when the evolution of these governmental structures is traced.