Illustrations of Universal Progress Part 19

Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "const.i.tutions are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and re-quoted as it has, shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star in the surrounding darkness.

Such a conception could not, indeed, fail to be startling when let fall in the midst of a system of thought to which it was utterly alien. Universally in Macintosh's day, things were explained on the hypothesis of manufacture, rather than that of growth: as indeed they are, by the majority, in our own day. It was held that the planets were severally projected round the sun from the Creator's hand; with exactly the velocity required to balance the sun's attraction. The formation of the Earth, the separation of sea from land, the production of animals, were mechanical works from which G.o.d rested as a labourer rests. Man was supposed to be moulded after a manner somewhat akin to that in which a modeller makes a clay-figure. And of course, in harmony with such ideas, societies were tacitly a.s.sumed to be arranged thus or thus by direct interposition of Providence; or by the regulations of law-makers; or by both.

Yet that societies are not artificially put together, is a truth so manifest, that it seems wonderful men should have ever overlooked it.

Perhaps nothing more clearly shows the small value of historical studies, as they have been commonly pursued. You need but to look at the changes going on around, or observe social organization in its leading peculiarities, to see that these are neither supernatural, nor are determined by the wills of individual men, as by implication historians commonly teach; but are consequent on general natural causes. The one case of the division of labour suffices to show this. It has not been by command of any ruler that some men have become manufacturers, while others have remained cultivators of the soil. In Lancas.h.i.+re, millions have devoted themselves to the making of cotton-fabrics; in Yorks.h.i.+re, another million lives by producing woollens; and the pottery of Staffords.h.i.+re, the cutlery of Sheffield, the hardware of Birmingham, severally occupy their hundreds of thousands. These are large facts in the structure of English society; but we can ascribe them neither to miracle, nor to legislation. It is not by "the hero as king," any more than by "collective wisdom," that men have been segregated into producers, wholesale distributors, and retail distributors.

The whole of our industrial organization, from its main outlines down to its minutest details, has become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but, to a considerable extent, in spite of legislative hindrances. It has arisen under the pressure of human wants and activities.

While each citizen has been pursuing his individual welfare, and none taking thought about division of labour, or, indeed, conscious of the need for it, division of labour has yet been ever becoming more complete. It has been doing this slowly and silently: scarcely any having observed it until quite modern times. By steps so small, that year after year the industrial arrangements have seemed to men just what they were before--by changes as insensible as those through which a seed pa.s.ses into a tree; society has become the complex body of mutually-dependent workers which we now see. And this economic organization, mark, is the all-essential organization.

Through the combination thus spontaneously evolved, every citizen is supplied with daily necessaries; while he yields some product or aid to others. That we are severally alive to-day, we owe to the regular working of this combination during the past week; and could it be suddenly abolished, a great proportion of us would be dead before another week ended. If these most conspicuous and vital arrangements of our social structure, have arisen without the devising of any one, but through the individual efforts of citizens to satisfy their own wants; we may be tolerably certain that the less important arrangements have similarly arisen.

"But surely," it will be said, "the social changes directly produced by law, cannot be cla.s.sed as spontaneous growths. When parliaments or kings order this or that thing to be done, and appoint officials to do it, the process is clearly artificial; and society to this extent becomes a manufacture rather than a growth." No, not even these changes are exceptions, if they be real and permanent changes. The true sources of such changes lie deeper than the acts of legislators. To take first the simplest instance. We all know that the enactments of representative governments ultimately depend on the national will: they may for a time be out of harmony with it, but eventually they must conform to it. And to say that the national will finally determines them, is to say that they result from the average of individual desires; or, in other words--from the average of individual natures. A law so initiated, therefore, really grows out of the popular character.

In the case of a Government representing a dominant cla.s.s, the same things holds, though not so manifestly. For the very existence of a cla.s.s monopolizing all power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. But for the feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule.

And if to the popular nature, must thus be ascribed the growth of an irresponsible ruling cla.s.s; then to the popular nature must be ascribed the social arrangements which that cla.s.s creates in the pursuit of its own ends. Even where the Government is despotic, the doctrine still holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form. Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very much swayed by general opinion--by precedent, by the feeling of his n.o.bles, his priesthood, his army--are in part immediate results of the national character; and when they are out of harmony with the national character, they are soon practically abrogated.

The failure of Cromwell permanently to establish a new social condition, and the rapid revival of suppressed inst.i.tutions and practices after his death, show how powerless is a monarch to change the type of the society he governs. He may disturb, he may r.e.t.a.r.d, or he may aid the natural process of organization; but the general course of this process is beyond his control. Nay, more than this is true. Those who regard the histories of societies as the histories of their great men, and think that these great men shape the fates of their societies, overlook the truth that such great men are the products of their societies. Without certain antecedents--without a certain average national character, they could neither have been generated nor could have had the culture which formed them. If their society is to some extent re-moulded by them, they were, both before and after birth, moulded by their society--were the results of all those influences which fostered the ancestral character they inherited, and gave their own early bias, their creed, morals, knowledge, aspirations.

So that such social changes as are immediately traceable to individuals of unusual power, are still remotely traceable to the social causes which produced these individuals, and hence, from the highest point of view, such social changes also, are parts of the general developmental process.

Thus that which is so obviously true of the industrial structure of society, is true of its whole structure. The fact that "const.i.tutions are not made, but grow," is simply a fragment of the much larger fact, that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, society is a growth and not a manufacture.

A perception that there exists some a.n.a.logy between the body politic and a living individual body, was early reached; and from time to time re-appeared in literature. But this perception was necessarily vague and more or less fanciful. In the absence of physiological science, and especially of those comprehensive generalizations which it has but recently reached, it was impossible to discern the real parallelisms.

The central idea of Plato's model Republic, is the correspondence between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind. Cla.s.sifying these faculties under the heads of Reason, Will, and Pa.s.sion, he cla.s.sifies the members of his ideal society under what he regards as three a.n.a.logous heads:--councillors, who are to exercise government; military or executive, who are to fulfil their behests; and the commonalty, bent on gain and selfish gratification. In other words, the ruler, the warrior, and the craftsman, are, according to him, the a.n.a.logues of our reflective, volitional, and emotional powers. Now even were there truth in the implied a.s.sumption of a parallelism between the structure of a society and that of a man, this cla.s.sification would be indefensible. It might more truly be contended that, as the military power obeys the commands of the Government, it is the Government which answers to the Will; while the military power is simply an agency set in motion by it. Or, again, it might be contended that whereas the Will is a product of predominant desires, to which the Reason serves merely as an eye, it is the craftsmen, who, according to the alleged a.n.a.logy, ought to be the moving power of the warriors.

Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite parallelism: not, however between a society and the human mind, but between a society and the human body. In the introduction to the work in which he developes this conception, he says--

"For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, in Latin CIVITAS, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended, and in which the _sovereignty_ is an artificial _soul_, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the _magistrates_ and other _officers_ of judicature and execution, artificial _joints_; _reward_ and _punishment_, by which, fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the _nerves_, that do the same in the body natural; the _wealth_ and _riches_ of all the particular members are the _strength_; _salus populi_, the _people's safety_, its _business_; _counsellors_, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the _memory_; _equity_ and _laws_ an artificial _reason_ and _will_; _concord_, _health_; _sedition_, _sickness_; _civil war_, _death_,"

And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are made up of mult.i.tudes of men. Just noting that these different a.n.a.logies a.s.serted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If the sovereignty is the _soul_ of the body politic, how can it be that magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable to _joints_? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory, reason, and will, be severally a.n.a.logous, the first to counsellors, who are a cla.s.s of public officers, and the other two to equity and laws, which are not cla.s.ses of officers, but abstractions? Or, once more, if magistrates are the artificial joints of society, how can reward and punishment be its nerves? Its nerves must surely be some cla.s.s of persons. Reward and punishment must in societies, as in individuals, be _conditions_ of the nerves, and not the nerves themselves.

But the chief errors of these comparisons made by Plato and Hobbes, lie much deeper. Both thinkers a.s.sume that the organization of a society is comparable, not simply to the organization of a living body in general, but to the organization of the human body in particular. There is no warrant whatever for a.s.suming this. It is in no way implied by the evidence; and is simply one of those fancies which we commonly find mixed up with the truths of early speculation. Still more erroneous are the two conceptions in this, that they construe a society as an artificial structure. Plato's model republic--his ideal of a healthful body politic--is to be consciously put together by men; just as a watch might be: and Plato manifestly thinks of societies in general as thus originated. Quite specifically does Hobbes express this view. "For by _art_," he says, "is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH." And he even goes so far as to compare the supposed social contract, from which a society suddenly originates, to the creation of a man by the divine fiat. Thus they both fall into the extreme inconsistency of considering a community as similar in structure to a human being, and yet as produced in the same way as an artificial mechanism--in in nature, an organism; in history, a machine.

Notwithstanding errors, however, these speculations have considerable significance. That such a.n.a.logies, crudely as they are thought out, should have been alleged by Plato and Hobbes and many others, is a reason for suspecting that _some_ a.n.a.logy exists. The untenableness of the particular comparisons above instanced, is no ground for denying an essential parallelism; for early ideas are usually but vague adumbrations of the truth. Lacking the great generalizations of biology, it was, as we have said, impossible to trace out the real relations of social organizations to organizations of another order. We propose here to show what are the a.n.a.logies which modern science discloses to us.

Let us set out by succinctly stating the points of similarity and the points of difference. Societies agree with individual organisms in four conspicuous peculiarities:--

1. That commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in ma.s.s: some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they originally were.

2. That while at first so simple in structure as to be considered structureless, they a.s.sume, in the course of their growth, a continually-increasing complexity of structure.

3. That though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in them scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually acquire a mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the activity and life of each part is made possible only by the activity and life of the rest.

4. That the life and development of a society is independent of, and far more prolonged than, the life and development of any of its component units; who are severally born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body politic composed of them survives generation after generation, increasing in ma.s.s, completeness of structure, and functional activity.

These four parallelisms will appear the more significant the more we contemplate them. While the points specified, are points in which societies agree with individual organisms, they are points in which individual organisms agree with each other, and disagree with all things else. In the course of its existence, every plant and animal increases in ma.s.s, in a way not parallelled by inorganic objects: even such inorganic objects as crystals, which arise by growth, show us no such definite relation between growth and existence as organisms do. The orderly progress from simplicity to complexity, displayed by bodies politic in common with all living bodies, is a characteristic which distinguishes living bodies from the inanimate bodies amid which they move. That functional dependence of parts, which is scarcely more manifest in animals or plants than nations, has no counterpart elsewhere. And in no aggregate except an organic, or a social one, is there a perpetual removal and replacement of parts, joined with a continued integrity of the whole.

Moreover, societies and organisms are not only alike in these peculiarities, in which they are unlike all other things; but the highest societies, like the highest organisms, exhibit them in the greatest degree.

We see that the lowest animals do not increase to anything like the sizes of the higher ones; and, similarly, we see that aboriginal societies are comparatively limited in their growths. In complexity, our large civilized nations as much exceed primitive savage tribes, as a vertebrate animal does a zoophyte. Simple communities, like simple creatures, have so little mutual dependence of parts, that subdivision or mutilation causes but little inconvenience; but from complex communities, as from complex creatures, you cannot remove any considerable organ without producing great disturbance or death of the rest. And in societies of low type, as in inferior animals, the life of the aggregate, often cut short by division or dissolution, exceeds in length the lives of the component units, very far less than in civilized communities and superior animals; which outlive many generations of their component units.

On the other hand, the leading differences between societies and individual organisms are these:--

1. That societies have no specific external forms. This, however, is a point of contrast which loses much of its importance, when we remember that throughout the vegetal kingdom, as well as in some lower divisions of the animal kingdom, the forms are often very indefinite--definiteness being rather the exception than the rule; and that they are manifestly in part determined by surrounding physical circ.u.mstances, as the forms of societies are. If, too, it should eventually be shown, as we believe it will, that the form of every species of organism has resulted from the average play of the external forces to which it has been subject during its evolution as a species; then, that the external forms of societies should depend, as they do, on surrounding conditions, will be a further point of community.

2. That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism consists, forms a continuous ma.s.s, the living elements of a society do not form a continuous ma.s.s; but are more or less widely dispersed over some portion of the Earth's surface. This, which at first sight appears to be a fundamental distinction, is one which yet to a great extent disappears when we contemplate all the facts. For, in the lower divisions of the animal and vegetal kingdoms, there are types of organization much more nearly allied, in this respect, to the organization of a society, than might be supposed--types in which the living units essentially composing the ma.s.s, are dispersed through an inert substance, that can scarcely be called living in the full sense of the word. It is thus with some of the _Protococci_ and with the _Nostoceae_, which exist as cells imbedded in a viscid matter. It is so, too, with the _Thala.s.sicollae_--bodies that are made up of differentiated parts, dispersed through an undifferentiated jelly. And throughout considerable portions of their bodies, some of the _Acalephae_ exhibit more or less distinctly this type of structure.

Indeed, it may be contended that this is the primitive form of all organization; seeing that, even in the highest creatures, as in ourselves, every tissue developes out of what physiologists call a blastema--an unorganized though organizable substance, through which organic points are distributed. Now this is very much the case with a society. For we must remember that though the men who make up a society, are physically separate and even scattered; yet that the surface over which they are scattered is not one devoid of life, but is covered by life of a lower order which ministers to their life. The vegetation which clothes a country, makes possible the animal life in that country; and only through its animal and vegetal products can such a country support a human society. Hence the members of the body politic are not to be regarded as separated by intervals of dead s.p.a.ce; but as diffused through a s.p.a.ce occupied by life of a lower order. In our conception of a social organism, we must include all that lower organic existence on which human existence, and therefore social existence, depends. And when we do this, we see that the citizens who make up a community, may be considered as highly vitalized units surrounded by substances of lower vitality, from which they draw their nutriment: much as in the cases above instanced. Thus, when examined, this apparent distinction in great part disappears.

3. That while the ultimate living elements of an individual organism, are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those of the social organism are capable of moving from place to place, seems a marked disagreement. But here, too, the disagreement is much less than would be supposed. For while citizens are locomotive in their private capacities, they are fixed in their public capacities. As farmers, manufacturers, or traders, men carry on their business at the same spots, often throughout their whole lives; and if they go away occasionally, they leave behind others to discharge their functions in their absence. Each great centre of production, each manufacturing town or district, continues always in the same place; and many of the firms in such town or district, are for generations carried on either by the descendants or successors of those who founded them. Just as in a living body, the cells that make up some important organ, severally perform their functions for a time and then disappear, leaving others to supply their places; so, in each part of a society, the organ remains, though the persons who compose it change. Thus, in social life, as in the life of an animal, the units as well as the larger agencies formed of them, are in the main stationary as respects the places where they discharge their duties and obtain their sustenance. And hence the power of individual locomotion does not practically affect the a.n.a.logy.

4. The last and perhaps the most important distinction, is, that while in the body of an animal, only a special tissue is endowed with feeling; in a society, all the members are endowed with feeling. Even this distinction, however, is by no means a complete one. For in some of the lowest animals, characterized by the absence of a nervous system, such sensitiveness as exists is possessed by all parts. It is only in the more organized forms that feeling is monopolized by one cla.s.s of the vital elements. Moreover, we must remember that societies, too, are not without a certain differentiation of this kind. Though the units of a community are all sensitive, yet they are so in unequal degrees. The cla.s.ses engaged in agriculture and laborious occupations in general, are much less susceptible, intellectually and emotionally, than the rest; and especially less so than the cla.s.ses of highest mental culture. Still, we have here a tolerably decided contrast between bodies politic and individual bodies.

And it is one which we should keep constantly in view. For it reminds us that while in individual bodies, the welfare of all other parts is rightly subservient to the welfare of the nervous system, whose pleasurable or painful activities make up the good or evil of life; in bodies politic, the same thing does not hold, or holds to but a very slight extent. It is well that the lives of all parts of an animal should be merged in the life of the whole; because the whole has a corporate consciousness capable of happiness or misery. But it is not so with a society; since its living units do not and cannot lose individual consciousness; and since the community as a whole has no corporate consciousness. And this is an everlasting reason why the welfare of citizens cannot rightly be sacrificed to some supposed benefit of the State; but why, on the other hand, the State is to be maintained solely for the benefit of citizens. The corporate life must here be subservient to the lives of the parts; instead of the lives of the parts being subservient to the corporate life.

Such, then, are the points of a.n.a.logy and the points of difference. May we not say that the points of difference serve but to bring into clearer light the points of a.n.a.logy. While comparison makes definite the obvious contrasts between organisms commonly so called, and the social organism; it shows that even these contrasts are not so decided as was to be expected.

The indefiniteness of form, the discontinuity of the parts, the mobility of the parts, and the universal sensitiveness, are not only peculiarities of the social organism which have to be stated with considerable qualifications; but they are peculiarities to which the inferior cla.s.ses of animals present approximations. Thus we find but little to conflict with the all-important a.n.a.logies. That societies slowly augment in ma.s.s; that they progress in complexity of structure; that at the same time their parts become more mutually dependent; that their living units are removed and replaced without destroying their integrity; and further, that the extents to which they display these peculiarities are proportionate to their vital activities; are traits that societies have in common with organic bodies.

And these traits in which they agree with organic bodies and disagree with all other things--these traits which in truth specially characterize organic bodies, entirely subordinate the minor distinctions: such distinctions being scarcely greater than those which separate one half of the organic kingdom from the other. The _principles_ of organization are the same; and the differences are simply differences of application.

Here ending this general survey of the facts which justify the comparison of a society to a living body; let us look at them in detail. We shall find that the parallelism becomes the more marked the more closely it is traced.

The lowest animal and vegetal forms--_Protozoa_ and _Protophyta_--are chiefly inhabitants of the water. They are minute bodies, most of which are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are extremely simple in structure; and some of them, as the _Rhizopods_, almost structureless. Multiplying, as they ordinarily do, by the spontaneous division of their bodies, they produce halves, which may either become quite separate and move away in different directions, or may continue attached. By the repet.i.tion of this process of fission, aggregations of various sizes and kinds are formed. Among the _Protophyta_ we have some cla.s.ses, as the _Diatomaceae_ and the Yeast-plant, in which the individuals may be either separate, or attached in groups of two, three, four, or more; other cla.s.ses in which a considerable number of individual cells are united into a thread (_Conferva_, _Monilia_); others in which they form a net work (_Hydrodictyon_); others in which they form plates (_Ulva_); and others in which they form ma.s.ses (_Laminaria_, _Agaricus_): all which vegetal forms, having no distinction of root, stem, or leaf, are called _Thallogens_.

Among the _Protozoa_ we find parallel facts. Immense numbers of _Am[oe]ba_-like creatures, ma.s.sed together in a framework of h.o.r.n.y fibres, const.i.tute Sponge. In the _Foraminifera_, we see smaller groups of such creatures arranged into more definite shapes. Not only do these almost structureless _Protozoa_ unite into regular or irregular aggregations of various sizes; but among some of the more organized ones, as the _Vorticellae_, there are also produced cl.u.s.ters of individuals, proceeding from a common stock. But these little societies of monads, or cells, or whatever else we may call them, are societies only in the lowest sense: there is no subordination of parts among them--no organization. Each of the component units lives by and for itself; neither giving nor receiving aid.

There is no mutual dependence, save that consequent on mere mechanical union.

Now do we not here discern a.n.a.logies to the first stages of human societies? Among the lowest races, as the Bushmen, we find but incipient aggregation: sometimes single families; sometimes two or three families wandering about together. The number of a.s.sociated units is small and variable; and their union inconstant. No division of labour exists except between the s.e.xes; and the only kind of mutual aid is that of joint attack or defence. We see nothing beyond an undifferentiated group of individuals, forming the germ of a society; just as in the h.o.m.ogeneous groups of cells above described, we see only the initial stage of animal and vegetal organization.

The comparison may now be carried a step higher. In the vegetal kingdom we pa.s.s from the _Thallogens_, consisting of mere ma.s.ses of similar cells, to the _Acrogens_, in which the cells are not similar throughout the whole ma.s.s; but are here aggregated into a structure serving as leaf, and there into a structure serving as root: thus forming a whole in which there is a certain subdivision of functions among the units; and therefore a certain mutual dependence. In the animal kingdom we find a.n.a.logous progress. From mere unorganized groups of cells, or cell-like bodies, we ascend to groups of such cells arranged into parts that have different duties. The common Polype, from whose substance may be separated individual cells which exhibit, when detached, appearances and movements like those of the solitary _Am[oe]ba_, ill.u.s.trates this stage. The component units, though still showing great community of character, a.s.sume somewhat diverse functions in the skin, in the internal surface, and in the tentacles. There is a certain amount of "physiological division of labour."

Turning to societies, we find these stages paralleled in the majority of aboriginal tribes. When, instead of such small variable groups as are formed by Bushmen, we come to the larger and more permanent groups formed by savages not quite so low, we begin to find traces of social structure.

Though industrial organization scarcely shows itself, except in the different occupations of the s.e.xes; yet there is always more or less of governmental organization. While all the men are warriors and hunters, only a part of them are included in the council of chiefs; and in this council of chiefs some one has commonly supreme authority. There is thus a certain distinction of cla.s.ses and powers; and through this slight specialization of functions, is effected a rude co-operation among the increasing ma.s.s of individuals, whenever the society has to act in its corporate capacity.

Beyond this a.n.a.logy in the slight extent to which organization is carried, there is a.n.a.logy in the indefiniteness of the organization. In the _Hydra_, the respective parts of the creature's substance have many functions in common. They are all contractile; omitting the tentacles, the whole of the external surface can give origin to young _hydrae_; and when turned inside out, stomach performs the duties of skin, and skin the duties of stomach.

In aboriginal societies such differentiations as exist are similarly imperfect. Notwithstanding distinctions of rank, all persons maintain themselves by their own exertions. Not only do the head men of the tribe, in common with the rest, build their own huts, make their own weapons, kill their own food; but the chief does the like. Moreover, in the rudest of these tribes, such governmental organization as exists is very inconstant.

It is frequently changed by violence or treachery, and the function of ruling a.s.sumed by other members of the community. Thus between the rudest societies and some of the lowest forms of animal life there is a.n.a.logy alike in the slight extent to which organization is carried, in the indefiniteness of this organization, and in its want of fixity.

A further complication of the a.n.a.logy is at hand. From the aggregation of units into organized groups, we pa.s.s to the multiplication of such groups, and their coalescence into compound groups. The _Hydra_, when it has reached a certain bulk, puts forth from its surface a bud, which, growing and gradually a.s.suming the form of the parent, finally becomes detached; and by this process of gemmation, the creature peoples the adjacent water with others like itself. A parallel process is seen in the multiplication of those lowly-organized tribes above described. One of them having increased to a size that is either too great for co-ordination under so rude a structure, or else that is greater than the surrounding country can supply with game and other wild food, there arises a tendency to divide; and as in such communities there are ever occurring quarrels, jealousies, and other causes of division, there soon comes an occasion on which a part of the tribe separates under the leaders.h.i.+p of some subordinate chief, and migrates. This process being from time to time repeated, an extensive region is at length occupied with numerous separate tribes descended from a common ancestry. The a.n.a.logy by no means ends here. Though in the common _Hydra_, the young ones that bud out from the parent soon become detached and independent; yet throughout the rest of the cla.s.s _Hydrozoa_, to which this creature belongs, the like does not generally happen. The successive individuals thus developed continue attached; give origin to other such individuals which also continue attached; and so there results a compound animal. As in the _Hydra_ itself, we find an aggregation of units which, considered separately, are akin to the lowest _Protozoa_; so here, in a _Zoophyte_, we find an aggregation of such aggregations. The like is also seen throughout the extensive family of _Polyzoa_ or _Molluscoida_. The Ascidian Mollusks, too, in their many varied forms, show us the same thing: exhibiting, at the same time, various degrees of union subsisting among the component individuals. For while in the _Salpae_ the component individuals adhere so slightly that a blow on the vessel of water in which they are floating will separate them; in the _Botryllidae_ there exists a vascular connexion between them, and a common circulation.

Now in these various forms and degrees of aggregation, may we not see paralleled the union of groups of connate tribes into nations? Though in regions where circ.u.mstances permit, the separate tribes descended from some original tribe, migrate in all directions, and become far removed and quite separate; yet, in other cases, where the territory presents barriers to distant migration, this does not happen: the small kindred communities are held in closer contact, and eventually become more or less united into a nation. The contrast between the tribes of American Indians and the Scottish clans, ill.u.s.trates this. And a glance at our own early history, or the early histories of continental nations, shows this fusion of small simple communities taking place in various ways and to various extents. As says M. Guizot, in his history of "The Origin of Representative Government,"--

"By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak, and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service. Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first inst.i.tuted it, to take a wider range."

That is to say, the small tribes, clans, or feudal unions, sprung mostly from a common stock, and long held in contact as occupants of adjacent lands, gradually get united in other ways than by mere adhesion of race and proximity.

A further series of changes begins now to take place; to which, as before, we shall find a.n.a.logies in individual organisms. Returning again to the _Hydrozoa_, we observe that in the simplest of the compound forms, the connected individuals developed from a common stock, are alike in structure, and perform like functions: with the exception, indeed, that here and there a bud, instead of developing into a stomach, mouth, and tentacles, becomes an egg-sac. But with the oceanic _Hydrozoa_, this is by no means the case. In the _Calycophoridae_, some of the polypes growing from the common germ, become developed and modified into large, long, sack-like bodies, which by their rhythmical contractions move through the water, dragging the community of polypes after them. In the _Physophoridae_, a variety of organs similarly arise by transformation of the budding polypes; so that in creatures like the _Physalia_, commonly known as the "Portuguese Man-of-war," instead of that tree-like group of similar individuals forming the original type of the cla.s.s, we have a complex ma.s.s of unlike parts fulfilling unlike duties. As an individual _Hydra_ may be regarded as a group of _Protozoa_, which have become partially metamorphosed into different organs; so a _Physalia_ is, morphologically considered, a group of _Hydrae_ of which the individuals have been variously transformed to fit them for various functions.

This differentiation upon differentiation, is just what takes place in the evolution of a civilized society. We observed how, in the small communities first formed, there arises a certain simple political organization--there is a partial separation of cla.s.ses having different duties. And now we have to observe how, in a nation formed by the fusion of such small communities, the several sections, at first alike in structures and modes of activity, gradually become unlike in both--gradually become mutually-dependent parts, diverse in their natures and functions.