CHAPTER IX: THE REGULATING SYSTEM.

§ 249. When observing how the great systems of organs, individual and social, are originally marked off from one another, we recognized the truth that the inner and outer parts become respectively adapted to those functions 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 structures carrying on outer actions is determined by the characters of things existing around.

Stated in a more concrete form, the general 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 surrounding 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 as a whole in conflict with other aggregates, Edition: current; Page: [520] indirectly results from the carrying on of conflicts 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 herbivorous animal from a distant carnivore; and is an essential aid to the eagle’s successful swoop on a creature far below. 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 nervous 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 presence of prey, enemies, and competitors. On glancing up from low types of animals having but rudimentary eyes and small 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 preserved in the last by these superiorities. The implication, then, is that successive improvements of the organs of sense and motion, and of the internal co-ordinating apparatus which uses them, have indirectly 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 societies. Observe, first, the conditions under which there is an Edition: current; Page: [521] absence of this agency furthering combination; and then observe the conditions under which this agency begins to show itself.

Where food is scarce, diffusion great, and co-operation consequently hindered, there is no established chieftainship. The Fuegians, the Cayaguas 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 predominance of a temporary kind, such as tends to arise in every group, being the only approach to it. So of the Esquimaux, necessarily much scattered, Hearne 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. In like manner where barrenness of territory negatives anything more than occasional assemblings, as with the Ghippewayans, there is nothing like chieftainship beyond the effect due to character; and this is very small. Elsewhere 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, a Hill-tribe 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 diffusion, check the evolution of a political head. But it is not only in cases like these that governmental co-ordination is absent. It is absent also among tribes which are settled and considerably more advanced, provided they are not given to war. Among such Papuans as the Arafuras and the Dalrymple Islanders, there are but nominal chiefs: the people living “in such peace and brotherly love with one another” that they need no control but the decisions of their elders. Edition: current; Page: [522] The Todas, too, wholly without military organization, and described as peaceable, mild, friendly, have no political headships. So again is it with the placable Bodo and Dhimáls; described as being honest, truthful, entirely free from revenge, cruelty, and violence, and as having headmen whose authorities are scarcely more than nominal. To which, as similarly significant, I may add that the Lepchas, referred to by Sir J. Hooker as “amiable and obliging,” 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 political co-ordination initiated. Edwards says the Caribs in time of peace admitted no supremacy; but, he adds, “in war, experience had taught them that subordination was as requisite as courage.” So, too, describing the confederations of tribes among the Caribs, Humboldt compares them with “those warlike hordes who see no advantage in the ties of society but for common defence.” Of the Creeks, whose subordination to authority is but slight, Schoolcraft says “it would be difficult, 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 undoubtedly did exist among the Tasmanians, though they were neither hereditary nor elective. They were, nevertheless, recognized, especially in time of war, as leaders of the tribes. . . . After the cessation of hostilities they retired . . . to the quietude of every-day forest life.” In other cases we find a permanent change produced. Kotzebue says the Kamschadales “acknowledged no chief;” while another statement is that the principal authority was that of “the old men, or those who were remarkable for their Edition: current; Page: [523] bravery.” 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 development 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 Patagonians 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 nations, which cohered under a settled system of co-operation, resulted from a war with the English. Stages in the genesis of a compound controlling agency by conflict with other societies are shown us by the Polynesians. In Samoa eight or ten village-communities, which are in other respects independent,

Early histories of the civilized similarly show us how union of smaller social aggregates for offensive or defensive purposes, necessitating co-ordination of their actions, tends to initiate a central co-ordinating agency. Instance the Hebrew monarchy: the previously-separate tribes of Israelites 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 organization, political and naval, which accompanied it, was a concomitant of the continued activity of the confederacy against external enemies. Instance in later times the development of governments among Teutonic peoples. At the beginning of the Christian era there were only chieftainships of separate tribes; and, during wars, temporary greater chieftainships Edition: current; Page: [524] 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 transforming these military leaders into kings over consolidated states.

As this differentiation by which there arises first a temporary and then a permanent military head, who passes insensibly into a political head, is initiated by conflict with adjacent societies, it naturally happens that his political power increases as military activity continues. Everywhere, providing extreme diffusion does not prevent, we find this connexion between predatory activity and 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, the Michells say—“The word Manap literally 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 Kirghiz rulers.” Africa shows it in the cannibal Niam-niams, whose king is unlimited lord of persons and things; or again in the sanguinary Dahomans with their Amazon army, and in the warlike Ashantees, all trained to arms: both of them under governments so absolute that the highest officials are slaves to the king. Polynesia shows it in the ferocious Fijians, whose tribes are ever fighting with one another, and among whom loyalty to absolute rulers is the extremest imaginable—even so extreme that people of a slave district “said it was their duty to become food and sacrifices for the chiefs.” This relation between the degree of power in the political head and the degree of militancy, has, indeed, been made familiar to us in the histories of ancient and modern civilized races. The connexion is implied in the Assyrian inscriptions as well as in the frescoes and papyri of Egypt. The case of Pausanias and other such cases, were regarded by the Spartans Edition: current; Page: [525] themselves as showing the tendency of generals to become despots—as showing, that is, the tendency of active operations against adjacent societies to generate centralized political power. How the imperativeness fostered by continuous command of armies thus passes into political imperativeness, has been again and again shown us in later histories.

Here, then, the induction we have to carry with us is that as in the individual organism that nervo-muscular apparatus which carries on conflict with environing organisms, begins with, and is developed by, that conflict; so the governmental-military organization of a society, is initiated by, and evolves along with, the warfare between societies. Or, to speak more strictly, there is thus evolved that part of its governmental organization which conduces to efficient co-operation against other societies.

§ 251. The development of the regulating system may now be dealt with. Let us first trace the governmental agency through its stages of complication.

In small and little-differentiated aggregates, individual and social, the structure which co-ordinates does not become complex: neither the need for it nor the materials for forming and supporting it, exist. But complexity begins in compound aggregates. In either case its commencement is seen in the rise of a superior co-ordinating centre exercising control over inferior centres. Among animals the Annulosa illustrate this most clearly. In an annelid the like nervous structures of the like successive segments, are but little subordinated to any chief ganglion or group of ganglia. But along with that evolution which, integrating and differentiating the segments, produces a higher annulose animal, there arise at the end which moves foremost, more developed senses and appendages for action, as well as a cluster of ganglia connected with them; and along with formation of this goes an increasing control exercised by it Edition: current; Page: [526] over the ganglia of the posterior segments. Not very strongly marked in such little-integrated types as centipedes, a nervous centralization of this kind becomes great in such integrated types as the higher crustaceans and the arachnida. So is it in the progress from compound social aggregates that are loosely coherent to those that are consolidated. Manifestly during those early stages in which the chief of a conquering tribe succeeds only in making the chiefs of adjacent tribes tributary while he lives, the political centralization is but slight; and hence, as in cases before referred to in Africa and elsewhere, the powers of the local centres re-assert themselves when they can throw off their temporary subordination. Many races which have got beyond the stage of separate simple tribes, show us, along with various degrees of cohesion, various stages in the subjection of local governing centres to a general governing centre. When first visited, the Sandwich Islanders had a king with turbulent chiefs, formerly independent; and in Tahiti there was similarly a monarch with secondary rulers but little subordinate. So was it with the New Zealanders; and so was it with the Malagasy until a century since. The nature of the political organization during such stages, is shown us by the relative degrees of power which the general and special centres exercise over the people of each division. Thus of the Tahitians we read that the power of the chief was supreme in his own district, and greater than that of the king over the whole. Lichtenstein tells us of the Koossas that “they are all vassals of the king, chiefs, as well as those under them; but the subjects are generally so blindly attached to their chiefs, that they will follow them against the king.” “Scarcely would the slave of an Ashantee chief,” says Cruickshank, “obey the mandate of his king, without the special concurrence of his immediate master.” And concerning the three grades of chiefs among the Araucanians, Thompson says of those who rule the smallest divisions that “their authority is less Edition: current; Page: [527] precarious” than that of the higher officers. These few instances, which might readily be multiplied, remind us of the relations between major and minor political centres in feudal times; when there were long periods during which the subjection of barons to kings was being established—during which failures of cohesion and re-assertions of local authority occurred—during which there was loyalty to the district ruler greater than that to the general ruler.

And now let us note deliberately, what was before implied, that this subordination of local governing centres to a general governing centre, accompanies co-operation of the components of the compound aggregate in its conflicts with other like aggregates. Between such superior Annulosa as the winged insects and clawed crustaceans above described as having centralized nervous systems, and the inferior Annulosa composed of many similar segments with feeble limbs, the contrast is not only in the absence from these last of centralized nervous systems, but also in the absence of offensive and defensive appliances of efficient kinds. In the high types, nervous subordination of the posterior segments to the anterior, has accompanied the growth of those anterior appendages which preserve the aggregate of segments in its dealings with prey and enemies; and this centralization of the nervous structure has resulted from the co-operation of these external organs. It is thus also with the political centralizations which become permanent. So long as the subordination is established by internal conflict of the divisions with one another, and hence involves antagonism among them, it remains unstable; but it tends towards stability in proportion as the regulating agents, major and minor, are habituated to combined action against external enemies. The recent changes in Germany have re-illustrated under our eyes this political centralization by combination in war, which was so abundantly illustrated in the Middle Ages by the rise of monarchical governments over numerous fiefs.

How this compound regulating agency for internal control, results from combined external actions of the compound aggregate in war, we may understand on remembering that at first the army and the nation are substantially the same. As in each primitive tribe the men are all warriors, so, during early stages of civilization the military body is co-extensive with the adult male population excluding only the slaves—co-extensive with all that part of the society which has political life. In fact the army is the nation mobilized, and the nation the quiescent army. Hence men who are local rulers while at home, and leaders of their respective bands of dependents when fighting a common foe under direction of a general leader, become minor heads disciplined in subordination to the major head; and as they carry more or less of this subordination home with them, the military organization developed during war survives as the political organization during peace.

Chiefly, however, we have here to note that in the compound regulating system evolved during the formation of a compound social aggregate, what were originally independent local centres of regulation become dependent local centres, serving as deputies under command of the general centre; just as the local ganglia above described become agents acting under direction of the cephalic ganglia.

§ 252. This formation of a compound regulating system characterized by a dominant centre and subordinate centres, is accompanied, in both individual organisms and social organisms, by increasing size and complexity of the dominant centre.

In an animal, along with development of senses to yield information and limbs to be guided in conformity with it, so that by their co-operation prey may be caught and enemies escaped, there must arise one place to which the various kinds of information are brought, and from which are issued the adjusted motor impulses; and, in proportion as evolution Edition: current; Page: [529] of the senses and limbs progresses, this centre which utilizes increasingly-varied information and directs better-combined movements, necessarily comes to have more numerous unlike parts and a greater total mass. Ascending through the annulose sub-kingdom, we find a growing aggregation of optic, auditory, and other ganglia receiving stimuli, together with the ganglia controlling the chief legs, claws, etc. And so in the vertebrate series, beginning in its lowest member with an almost uniform cord formed of local centres undirected by a brain, we rise finally to a cord appended to an integrated cluster of minor centres through which are issued the commands of certain supreme centres growing out of them. In a society it similarly happens that the political agency which gains predominance, is gradually augmented and complicated by additional parts for additional functions. The chief of chiefs begins to require helpers in carrying on control. He gathers round him some who get information, some with whom he consults, some who execute his commands. No longer a governing unit, he becomes the nucleus in a cluster of governing units. Various stages in this compounding, proceeding generally from the temporary to the permanent, may be observed. In the Sandwich Islands the king and governor have each a number of chiefs who attend on them and execute their orders. The Tahitian king had a prime minister, as well as a few chiefs to give advice; and in Samoa, too, each village chief has a sort of prime minister. Africa shows us stages in this progress from simple personal government to government through agents. Among the Beetjuans (a Bechuana people) the king executes “his own sentence, even when the criminal is condemned to death;” and Lichtenstein tells us of another group of Bechuanas (the Maatjaping) that, his people being disorderly, the monarch “swung his tremendous sjambok of rhinoceros leather, striking on all sides, till he fairly drove the whole multitude before him:” being thereupon imitated by his courtiers. And then of the Edition: current; Page: [530] Bachapin government, belonging to this same race, we learn that the duty of the chief’s brother “was to convey the chief’s orders wherever the case demanded, and to see them put in execution.” Among the Koossas, governed by a king and vassal chiefs, every chief has councillors, and “the great council of the king is composed of the chiefs of particular kraals.” Again, the Zulu sovereign shares his power with two soldiers of his choice, and these form the supreme judges of the country. The appendages which add to the size and complexity of the governing centre in the larger African kingdoms are many and fully established. In Dahomey, besides two premiers and various functionaries surrounding the king, there are two judges, of whom one or other is “almost constantly with the king, informing him of every circumstance that passes;” and, according to Burton, every official is provided with a second in command, who is in reality a spy. Though the king joins in judging causes, and though when his executioners bungle he himself shows them how to cut off heads, yet he has agents around him into whose hands these functions are gradually lapsing; as, in the compound nervous structures above described, there are appended centres through which information is communicated, and appended centres through which the decisions pass into execution. How in civilized nations analogous developments have taken place—how among ourselves William the Conqueror made his “justiciar” supreme administrator of law and finance, having under him a body of Secretaries of whom the chief was called Chancellor; how the justiciar became Prime Minister and his staff a supreme court, employed alike on financial and judicial affairs and in revision of laws; how this in course of time became specialized and complicated by appendages; needs not to be shown in detail. Always the central governing agency while being enlarged, is made increasingly heterogeneous by the multiplication of parts having specialized functions. And then, as in nervous evolution after a certain complication of Edition: current; Page: [531] the directive and executive centres is reached, there begin to grow deliberative centres, which, at first unobtrusive, eventually predominate; so in political evolution, those assemblies which contemplate the remoter results of political actions, beginning as small additions to the central governing agency, outgrow the rest. It is manifest that these latest and highest governing centres perform in the two cases analogous functions. As in a man the cerebrum, while absorbed in the guidance of conduct at large, mainly in reference to the future, leaves the lower, simpler, older centres to direct the ordinary movements and even the mechanical occupations; so the deliberative assembly of a nation, not attending to those routine actions in the body politic controlled by the various administrative agencies, is occupied with general requirements and the balancing of many interests which do not concern only the passing moment. It is to be observed, also, that these high centres in the two cases, are neither the immediate recipients of information nor the immediate issuers of commands; but receive from inferior agencies the facts which guide their decisions, and through other inferior agencies get those decisions carried into execution. The cerebrum is not a centre of sensation or of motion; but has the function of using the information brought through the sensory centres, for determining the actions to be excited by the motor centres. And in like manner a developed legislative body, though not incapable of getting impressions directly from the facts, is habitually guided by impressions indirectly gained through petitions, through the press, through reports of committees and commissions, through the heads of ministerial departments; and the judgments it arrives at are executed not under its immediate direction but under the immediate direction of subordinate centres, ministerial, judicial, etc.

One further concomitant may be added. During evolution of the supreme regulating centres, individual and social, the older parts become relatively automatic. A simple Edition: current; Page: [532] ganglion with its afferent and efferent fibres, receives stimuli and issues impulses unhelped and unchecked; but when there gather round it ganglia through which different kinds of impressions come to it, and others through which go from it impulses causing different motions, it becomes dependent on these, and in part an agent for transforming the sensory excitements of the first into the motor discharges of the last. As the supplementary parts multiply, and the impressions sent by them to the original centre, increasing in number and variety, involve multiplied impulses sent through the appended motor centres, this original centre becomes more and more a channel through which, in an increasingly-mechanical way, special stimuli lead to appropriate actions. Take, for example, three stages in the vertebrate animal. We have first an almost uniform spinal cord, to the successive portions of which are joined the sensory and motor nerves supplying the successive portions of the body: the spinal cord is here the supreme regulator. Then in the nervous system of vertebrates somewhat more advanced, the medulla oblongata and the sensory ganglia at the anterior part of this spinal cord, taking a relatively large share in receiving those guiding impressions which lead to motor discharges from its posterior part, tend to make this subordinate and its actions mechanical: the sensory ganglia have now become the chief rulers. And when in the course of evolution the cerebrum and cerebellum grow, the sensory ganglia with the co-ordinating motor centre to which they were joined, lapse into mere receivers of stimuli and conveyers of impulses: the last-formed centres acquire supremacy, and those preceding them are their servants. Thus is it with kings, ministries, and legislative bodies. As the original political head, acquiring larger functions, gathers agents around him who bring data for decisions and undertake execution of them, he falls more and more into the hands of these agents—has his judgments in great degree made for him Edition: current; Page: [533] by informers and advisers, and his deputed acts modified by executive officers: the ministry begins to rule through the original ruler. At a later stage the evolution of legislative bodies is followed by the subordination of ministries; who, holding their places by the support of majorities, are substantially the agents executing the wills of those majorities. And while the ministry is thus becoming less deliberative and more executive, as the monarch did previously, the monarch is becoming more automatic: royal functions are performed by commission; royal speeches are but nominally such; royal assents are practically matters of form. This general truth, which our own constitutional history so well illustrates, was illustrated in another way during the development of Athenian institutions, political, judicial, and administrative: the older classes of functionaries survived, but fell into subordinate positions, performing duties of a comparatively routine kind.

§ 253. From the general structures of regulating systems, and from the structures of their great centres of control, we must now turn to the appliances through which control is exercised. For co-ordinating the actions of an aggregate, individual or social, there must be not only a governing centre, but there must also be media of communication through which this centre may affect the parts.

Ascending stages of animal organization carry us from types in which this requirement is scarcely at all fulfilled, to types in which it is fulfilled effectually. Aggregates of very humble orders, as Sponges, Thallassicollæ, etc., without co-ordinating centres of any kind, are also without means of transferring impulses from part to part; and there is no co-operation of parts to meet an outer action. In Hydrozoa and Actinozoa, not possessing visible centres of co-ordination, slow adjustments result from the diffusion of molecular changes from part to part through the body: contraction of the whole creature presently follows rough handling of the Edition: current; Page: [534] tentacles, while contact of the tentacles with nutritive matter causes a gradual closing of them around it. Here by the propagation of some influence among them, the parts are made to co-operate for the general good, feebly and sluggishly. In Polyzoa, along with the rise of distinct nerve-centres, there is a rise of distinct nerve-fibres, conveying impulses rapidly along definite lines, instead of slowly through the substance in general. Hence comes a relatively prompt co-operation of parts to deal with sudden external actions. And as these internuncial lines multiply, becoming at the same time well adjusted in their connexions, they make possible those varied co-ordinations which developed nervous centres direct. Analogous stages in social evolution are sufficiently manifest. Over a territory covered by groups devoid of political organization, news of an inroad spreads from person to person, taking long to diffuse over the whole area; and the inability of the scattered mass to co-operate, is involved as much by the absence of internuncial agencies as by the absence of regulating centres. But along with such slight political co-ordination as union for defence produces, there arise appliances for influencing the actions of distant allies. Even the Fuegians light fires to communicate intelligence. The Tasmanians, too, made use of signal fires, as do also the Tannese; and this method of producing a vague co-ordination among the parts in certain emergencies, is found among other uncivilized races. As we advance, and as more definite combinations of more varied kinds have to be effected for offence and defence, messengers are employed. Among the Fijians, for instance, men are sent with news and commands, and use certain mnemonic aids. The New Zealanders “occasionally conveyed information to distant tribes during war by marks on gourds.” In such comparatively advanced states as those of Ancient America, this method of sending news was greatly developed. The Mexicans had couriers who at full speed ran six-mile stages, and so carried intelligence, Edition: current; Page: [535] it is said, even 300 miles in a day; and the Peruvians, besides their fire and smoke signals in time of rebellion, had runners of the same kind. So, too, was it with the Persians. Herodotus writes:—

Thus what is in its early stage a slow propagation of impulses from unit to unit throughout a society, becomes, as we advance, a more rapid propagation along settled lines: so making quick and definitely-adjusted combinations possible. Moreover, we must note that this part of the regulating system, like its other parts, is initiated by the necessities of co-operation against alien societies. As in later times among Highland clans, the fast runner, bearing the fiery cross, carried a command to arm; so, in early English times, the messages were primarily those between rulers and their agents, and habitually concerned military affairs. Save in these cases (and even state-messengers could not move swiftly along the bad roads of early days) the propagation of intelligence through the body-politic was very slow. The slowness continued down to comparatively late periods. Queen Elizabeth’s death was not known in some parts of Devon until after the Court had gone out of mourning; and the news of the appointment of Cromwell as Protector took nineteen days to reach Bridgewater. Nor have we to remark only the tardy spread of the influences required for co-operation of parts. The smallness and uniformity of these influences have also to be noted in contrast with their subsequent greatness and multiformity. Instead of the courier bearing a single despatch, military or political, from one ruling agent to another, at irregular intervals in few places; there come eventually, through despatches of multitudinous letters daily and several times a-day, in all Edition: current; Page: [536] directions through every class, swift transits of impulses, no less voluminous than varied, all instrumental to co-operation. Two other internuncial agencies of more developed kinds are afterwards added. Out of the letter, when it had become comparatively frequent among the educated classes, there came the news-letter: at first a partially-printed sheet issued on the occurrence of an important event, and having an unprinted space left for a written letter. From this, dropping its blank part, and passing from the occasional into the periodic, came the newspaper. And the newspaper has grown in size, in multitudinousness, in variety, in frequency, until the feeble and slow waves of intelligence at long and irregular intervals, have become the powerful, regular, rapid waves by which, twice and thrice daily, millions of people receive throughout the kingdom stimulations and checks of all kinds, furthering quick and balanced adjustments of conduct. Finally there arises a far swifter propagation of stimuli serving to co-ordinate social actions, political, military, commercial, etc. Beginning with the semaphore-telegraph, which, reminding us in principle of the signal-fires of savages, differed by its ability to convey not single vague ideas only, but numerous, complex, and distinct ideas, we end with the electric-telegraph, immeasurably more rapid, through which go quite definite messages, infinite in variety and of every degree of complexity. And in place of a few such semaphore-telegraphs, transmitting, chiefly for governmental purposes, impulses in a few directions, there has come a multiplicity of lines of instant communication in all directions, subserving all purposes. Moreover, by the agency of these latest internuncial structures, the social organism, though discrete, has acquired a promptness of co-ordination equal to, and indeed exceeding, the promptness of co-ordination in concrete organisms. It was before pointed out (§ 221) that social units, though forming a discontinuous aggregate, achieve by language a transmission of impulses which, in individual aggregates, Edition: current; Page: [537] is achieved by nerves. But now, utilizing the molecular continuity of wires, the impulses are conveyed throughout the body-politic much faster than they would be were it a solid living whole. Including times occupied by taking messages to and from the offices in each place, any citizen in Edinburgh may give motion to any citizen in London, in less than one-fourth of the time a nervous discharge would take to pass from one to the other, were they joined by living tissue. Nor should we omit the fact that parallelism in the requirements, has caused something like parallelism in the arrangements, of the internuncial lines. Out of great social centres emerge many large clusters of wires, from which, as they get further away, diverge at intervals minor clusters, and these presently give off re-diverging clusters; just as main bundles of nerves on their way towards the periphery, from time to time emit lateral bundles, and these again others. Moreover, the distribution presents the analogy that near chief centres these great clusters of internuncial lines go side by side with the main channels of communication—railways and roads—but frequently part from these as they ramify; in the same way that in the central parts of a vertebrate animal, nerve-trunks habitually accompany arteries, while towards the periphery the proximity of nerves and arteries is not maintained: the only constant association being also similar in the two cases; for the one telegraph-wire which accompanies the railway system throughout every ramification, is the wire which checks and excites its traffic, as the one nerve which everywhere accompanies an artery, is the vaso-motor nerve regulating the circulation in it. Once more, it is a noteworthy fact that in both cases insulation characterizes the internuncial lines. Utterly unlike as are the molecular waves conveyed, it is needful in both cases that they should be limited to the channels provided. Though in the aerial telegraph-wires insulation is otherwise effected, in under-ground wires it is effected in a way analogous to that seen in nerve-fibres. Edition: current; Page: [538] Many wires united in a bundle are separated from one another by sheaths of non-conducting substance; as the nerve-fibres that run side by side in the same trunk, are separated from one another by their respective medullary sheaths.

The general result, then, is that in societies, as in living bodies, the increasing mutual dependence of parts, implying an increasingly-efficient regulating system, therefore implies not only developed regulating centres, but also means by which the influences of such centres may be propagated. And we see that as, under one of its aspects, organic evolution shows us more and more efficient internuncial appliances subserving regulation, so, too, does social evolution.

§ 254. There is one other remarkable and important parallelism. In both kinds of organisms the regulating system, during evolution, divides into two systems, to which is finally added a third partially-independent system; and the differentiations of these systems have common causes in the two cases.

The general law of organization, abundantly illustrated in foregoing chapters, is that distinct duties entail distinct structures; that from the strongest functional contrasts come the greatest structural differences; and that within each of the leading systems of organs first divided from one another in conformity with this principle, secondary divisions arise in conformity with the same principle. The implication is, then, that if in an organism, individual or social, the function of regulation falls into two divisions which are widely unlike, the regulating apparatus will differentiate into correspondingly-unlike parts, carrying on their unlike functions in great measure independently. This we shall find it does.

The fundamental division in a developed animal, we have seen to be that between the outer set of organs which deal with the environment and the inner set of organs which carry on sustentation. For efficient mutual aid it Edition: current; Page: [539] is requisite, not only that the actions of these inner and outer sets, considered as wholes, shall be co-ordinated; but also that each set shall have the actions of its several parts co-ordinated with one another. Prey can be caught or enemies escaped, only if the bones and muscles of each limb work together properly—only if all the limbs effectually co-operate—only if they jointly adjust their motions to the tactual, visual, and auditory impressions; and to combine these many actions of the various sensory and motor agents, there must be a nervous system that is large and complex in proportion as the actions combined are powerful, multiplied, and involved. Like in principle, though much less elaborate, is the combination required among the actions of the sustaining structures. If the masticated food is not swallowed when thrust to the entrance of the gullet, digestion cannot begin; if when food is in the stomach contractions, but no secretions, take place, or if the pouring out of gastric juices is not accompanied by due rhythmical movements, digestion is arrested; if the great appended glands send into the intestines not enough of their respective products, or send them at wrong times, or in wrong proportions, digestion is left imperfect; and so with the many minor simultaneous and successive processes which go to make up the general function. Hence there must be some nervous structure which, by its internuncial excitations and inhibitions, shall maintain the co-ordination. Now observe how widely unlike are the two kinds of co-ordination to be effected. The external doings must be quick in their changes. Swift motions, sudden variations of direction, instant stoppages, are needful. Muscular contractions must be exactly adjusted to preserve the balance, achieve the leap, evade the swoop. Moreover, involved combinations are implied; for the forces to be simultaneously dealt with are many and various. Again, the involved combinations, changing from moment to moment, rarely recur; because the circumstances are Edition: current; Page: [540] rarely twice alike. And once more, not the needs of the moment only, have to be met, but also the needs of a future more or less distant. Nothing of the kind holds with the internal co-ordinations. The same series of processes has to be gone through after every meal—varying somewhat with the quantity of food, with its quality, and with the degree to which it has been masticated. No quick, special, and exact adaptations are required; but only a general proportion and tolerable order among actions which are not precise in their beginnings, amounts, or endings. Hence for the sustaining organs there arises a regulating apparatus of a strongly contrasted character, which eventually becomes substantially separate. The sympathetic system of nerves, or “nervous system of organic life,” whether or not originally derived from the cerebro-spinal system, is, in developed vertebrates, practically independent. Though perpetually influenced by the higher system which, working the muscular structures, causes the chief expenditure, and though in its turn influencing this higher system, the two carry on their functions apart: they affect one another chiefly by general demands and general checks. Only over the heart and lungs, which are indispensable co-operators with both the sustaining organs and the expending organs, do we find that the superior and inferior nervous systems exercise a divided control. The heart, excited by the cerebro-spinal system in proportion to the supply of blood required for external action, is also excited by the sympathetic when a meal has made a supply of blood needful for digestion; and the lungs which (because their expansion has to be effected partly by thoracic muscles belonging to the outer system of organs) largely depend for their movements on cerebro-spinal nerves, are nevertheless also excited by the sympathetic when the alimentary organs are at work. And here, as showing the tendency there is for all these comparatively-constant vital processes to fall under a nervous control unlike that which directs the ever-varying outer processes, it may be remarked that such influences as Edition: current; Page: [541] the cerebro-spinal system exerts on the heart and lungs differ greatly from its higher directive actions—are mainly reflex and unconscious. Volition fails to modify the heart’s pulsations; and though an act of will may temporarily increase or decrease respiration, yet the average respiratory movements are not thus changeable, but during waking and sleeping are automatically determined. To which facts let me add that the broad contrast here illustrated in the highest or vertebrate type, is illustrated also in the higher members of the annulose type. Insects, too, have visceral nervous systems substantially distinguished from the nervous systems which co-ordinate outer actions. And thus we are shown that separation of the two functionally-contrasted regulating systems in animals, is a concomitant of greater evolution.

A parallel contrast of duties produces a parallel differentiation of structures during the evolution of social organisms. Single in low societies as in low animals, the regulating system in high societies as in high animals becomes divided into two systems; which, though they perpetually affect one another, carry on their respective controls with substantial independence. Observe the like causes for these like effects. Success in conflicts with other societies implies quickness, combination, and special adjustments to ever-varying circumstances. Information of an enemy’s movements must be swiftly conveyed; forces must be rapidly drafted to particular spots; supplies fit in kinds and quantities must be provided; military manœuvres must be harmonized; and to these ends there must be a centralized agency that is instantly obeyed. Quite otherwise is it with the structures carrying on sustentation. Though the actions of these have to be somewhat varied upon occasion, especially to meet war-demands, yet their general actions are comparatively uniform. The several kinds of food raised have to meet a consumption which changes within moderate limits only; for clothing the demands are tolerably Edition: current; Page: [542] constant, and alter in their proportions not suddenly but slowly; and so with commodities of less necessary kinds: rapidity, speciality, and exactness, do not characterize the required co-ordinations. Hence a place for another kind of regulating system. Such a system evolves as fast as the sustaining system itself evolves. Let us note its progress. In early stages the occupations are often such as to prevent division between the control of defensive actions and the control of sustaining actions, because the two are closely allied. Among the Mandans the families joined in hunting, and divided the spoil equally: showing us that the war with beasts carried on for joint benefit, was so nearly allied to the war with men carried on for joint benefit, that both remained public affairs. Similarly with the Comanches, the guarding of a tribe’s cattle is carried on in the same manner as military guarding; and since the community of individual interests in this protection of cattle from enemies, is like the community of interests in personal protection, unity in the two kinds of government continues. Moreover in simple tribes which are under rulers of any kinds, what authority exists is unlimited in range, and includes industrial actions as well as others. If there are merely wives for slaves, or if there is a slave-class, the dominant individuals who carry on outer attack and defence, also direct in person such labour as is performed; and where a chief having considerable power has arisen, he not only leads in war but orders the daily activities during peace. The Gonds, the Bhils, the Nagas, the Mishmis, the Kalmucks, and many other simple tribes, show us this identity of the political and industrial governments. A partial advance, leading to some distinction, does not separate the two in a definite way. Thus among the Kookies the rajah claims and regulates work, superintends village removals, and apportions the land each family has to clear on a new site; among the Santals the head man partially controls the people’s labour; and among the Khonds he acts as Edition: current; Page: [543] chief merchant. Polynesia presents like facts. The New Zealand chiefs superintend agricultural and building operations; the Sandwich Islanders have a market, in which “the price is regulated by the chiefs;” trade in Tonga also “is evidently under [the chief’s] supervision!” and the Kadayan chiefs “settle the price of rice.” So again in Celebes, the days for working in the plantations are decided by the political agency, and the people go at beat of gong; so again in East Africa, the times of sowing and harvest depend on the chief’s will, and among the Inland Negroes the “market is arranged according to the directions of the chiefs;” so again in some parts of Ancient America, as San Salvador, where the cazique directed the plantings; and so again in some parts of America at the present time. Those who trade with the Mundurcús “have first to distribute their wares . . . amongst the minor chiefs,” and then wait some months “for repayment in produce;” and the Patagonians could not sell any of their arms to Wilkes’s party without asking the chief’s permission. In other societies, and especially in those which are considerably developed, we find this union of political and industrial rule becoming modified: the agency, otherwise the same, is doubled. Thus among the Sakarran Dyaks there is a “trading chief” in addition to two principal chiefs; among the Dahomans there is a commercial chief in Whydah; and there are industrial chiefs in Fiji, where, in other respects, social organization is considerably advanced. At a later stage the commercial chief passes into the government officer exercising stringent supervision. In Ancient Guatemala a State-functionary fixed the price of the markets; and in Mexico, agents of the State saw that lands did not remain uncultivated. Facts of this kind introduce us to the stages passed through by European societies. Up to the 10th century each domain in France had its bond, or only partially-free, workmen and artizans, directed by the seigneur and paid in meals and goods; between the Edition: current; Page: [544] 11th and 14th centuries the feudal superiors, ecclesiastical or lay, regulated production and distribution to such extent that industrial and commercial licences had to be purchased from them; in the subsequent monarchical stage, it was a legal maxim that “the right to labour is a royal right, which the prince may sell and subjects can buy;” and onwards to the time of the Revolution, the country swarmed with officials who authorized occupations, dictated processes, examined products: since which times State-control has greatly diminished, and the adjustments of industry to the nation’s needs have been otherwise effected. Still better does our own history show us this progressive differentiation. In the Old English period the heads of guilds were identical with the local political heads—ealdormen, wick-, port-, or burgh-reeves; and the guild was itself in part a political body. Purchases and bargains had to be made in presence of officials. Agricultural and manufacturing processes were prescribed by law. Dictations of kindred kinds, though decreasing, continued to late times. Down to the 16th century there were metropolitan and local councils, politically authorized, which determined prices, fixed wages, etc. But during subsequent generations, restrictions and bounties disappeared; usury laws were abolished; liberty of commercial combination increased.

And now if, with those early stages in which the rudimentary industrial organization is ruled by the chief, and with those intermediate stages in which, as it develops, it gets a partially-separate political control, we contrast a late stage like our own, characterized by an industrial organization which has become predominant, we find that this has evolved for itself a substantially-independent control. There is now no fixing of prices by the State; nor is there prescribing of methods. Subject to but slight hindrances from a few licences, citizens adopt what occupations they please; buy and sell where they please. The amounts grown and manufactured, imported and exported, are unregulated by laws; Edition: current; Page: [545] improvements are not enforced nor bad processes legislatively interdicted; but men, carrying on their businesses as they think best, are simply required by law to fulfil their contracts and commanded not to aggress upon their neighbours. Under what system, then, are their industrial activities adjusted to the requirements? Under an internuncial system through which the various industrial structures receive from one another stimuli or checks caused by rises or falls in the consumptions of their respective products; and through which they jointly receive a stimulus when there is suddenly an extra consumption for war-purposes. Markets in the chief towns, where bargaining settles the prices of grain and cattle, of cottons and woollens, of metals and coal, show dealers the varying relations of supply and demand; and the reports of their transactions, diffused by the press, prompt each locality to increase or decrease of its special function. Moreover, while the several districts have their activities thus partially regulated by their local centres of business, the metropolis, where all these districts are represented by houses and agencies, has its central markets and its exchange, in which is effected such an averaging of the demands of all kinds, present and future, as keeps a due balance among the activities of the several industries. That is to say, there has arisen, in addition to the political regulating system, an industrial regulating system which carries on its co-ordinating function independently—a separate plexus of connected ganglia.

As above hinted, a third regulating system, partially distinguishable from the others, arises in both cases. For the prompt adjustment of functions to needs, supplies of the required consumable matters must be rapidly drafted to the places where activities are set up. If an organ in the individual body or in the body-politic, suddenly called into great action, could get materials for its nutrition or its secretion, or both, only through the ordinary quiet flow of Edition: current; Page: [546] the distributing currents, its enhanced action would soon flag. That it may continue responding to the increased demand, there must be an extra influx of the materials used in its actions—it must have credit in advance of function discharged. In the individual organism this end is achieved by the vaso-motor nervous system. The fibres of this ramify everywhere along with the arteries, which they enlarge or contract in conformity with stimuli sent along them. The general law, as discovered by Ludwig and Lovèn, is that when by the nerves of sensation there is sent inwards that impression which accompanies the activity of a part, there is reflected back to the part, along its vaso-motor nerves, an influence by which its minute arteries are suddenly dilated; and at the same time, through the vaso-motor nerves going to all inactive parts, there is sent an influence which slightly constricts the arteries supplying them: thus diminishing the flow of blood where it is not wanted, that the flow may be increased where it is wanted. In the social organism, or rather in such a developed social organism as our own in modern times, this kind of regulation is effected by the system of banks and associated financial bodies which lend out capital. When a local industry, called into unusual activity by increased consumption of its products, makes demands first of all on local banks, these, in response to the impressions caused by the rising activity conspicuous around them, open more freely those channels for capital which they command; and presently, with further rise of prosperity, the impression propagated to the financial centres in London produces an extension of the local credit, so that there takes place a dilatation of the in-flowing streams of men and commodities. While, at the same time, to meet this local need for capital, various industries elsewhere, not thus excited, and therefore not able to offer such good interest, get diminished supplies: some constriction of the circulation through them takes place. This third regulating system, observe, vaso-motor Edition: current; Page: [547] in the one case and monetary in the other, is substantially independent. Evidence exists that there are local vaso-motor centres possessing local control, as there are local monetary centres; and though there seems to be in each case a chief centre, difficult to distinguish amid the other regulating structures with which it is entangled, yet it is functionally separate. Though it may be bound up with the chief regulating system by which outer actions are controlled, it is not subject to that system. Volition in the one case cannot alter these local supplies of blood; and legislation in the other, ceasing to perturb as it once did the movements of capital, now leaves it almost entirely alone: even the State, with the structures under its direct control, standing to the financial corporations in the position of a customer, just as the brain and limbs do to the vaso-motor centres. Nor does this ruler of the circulation form part of that second regulating system which controls the organs carrying on sustentation, individual or social. The viscera get blood only by permission of these nerve-centres commanding their arteries, and if the outer organs are greatly exerted, the supply is shut off from the inner organs; and similarly the industrial system, with that centralized apparatus which balances its actions, cannot of itself draft capital here or there, but does this indirectly only through the impressions yielded by it to Lombard-street.

§ 255. Thus the increasing mutual dependence of parts, which both kinds of organisms display as they evolve, necessitates a further series of remarkable parallelisms. Co-operation being in either case impossible without appliances by which the co-operating parts shall have their actions adjusted, it inevitably happens that in the body-politic, as in the living body, there arises a regulating system; and within itself this differentiates as the sets of organs evolve.

The co-operation most urgent from the outset, is that required for dealing with environing enemies and prey. Edition: current; Page: [548] Hence the first regulating centre, individual and social, is initiated as a means to this co-operation; and its development progresses with the activity of this co-operation. As compound aggregates are formed by integration of simple ones, there arise in either case supreme regulating centres and subordinate ones; and the supreme centres begin to enlarge and complicate. While doubly-compound and trebly-compound aggregates show us further developments in complication and subordination, they show us, also, better internuncial appliances, ending in those which convey instant information and instant command.

To this chief regulating system, controlling the organs which carry on outer actions, there is, in either case, added during the progress of evolution, a regulating system for the inner organs carrying on sustentation; and this gradually establishes itself as independent. Naturally it comes later than the other. Complete utilization of materials for sustentation being less urgent, and implying co-ordination relatively simple, has its controlling appliances less rapidly developed than those which are concerned with the catching of prey and the defence against enemies.

And then the third or distributing system, which, though necessarily arising after the others, is indispensable to the considerable development of them, eventually gets a regulating apparatus peculiar to itself.